During the riots in Charlotte, North Carolina this week, rioters took to the highway around downtown and began surrounding vehicles, going up to the windows, apparently jumping on some cars, and generally being threatening.

When that news came across Twitter, Law professor Glenn Reynolds, who blogs and Tweets as the very popular Instapundit, shared it with his own comment. That comment got him suspended from Twitter.

The left lost their minds over this, because clearly this Tweet is much worse than actually surrounding people in their cars and threatening them.

The @Instapundit account is back on Twitter now, but Reynolds has been suspended elsewhere. USA Today gave him a forced month off and editorial page editor Bill Sternberg offered this statement.

USA TODAY expects its columnists to provide thoughtful, reasoned contributions to the national conversation, on all platforms. Glenn Reynolds’ ‘Run them down’ tweet, in response to a news report about protesters in Charlotte stopping traffic and surrounding vehicles, was a violation of that standard and can be interpreted as an incitement to violence. Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee who writes twice a week for USA TODAY, has apologized. His column has been suspended for one month.

After Reynolds was suspended from Twitter, streiff wrote the following, which is better quoted than restated:

Note the context. Reynolds is not, as the batsh** crazy left is claiming, encouraging people to run down protesters in the street. The context is “stopping traffic and surrounding vehicles.”

Exactly. Sternberg says “incitement to violence”. That is incorrect. It was not an incitement to violence, nor can it be interpreted that way. When someone is threatening you, taking measures to protect your life, or the lives of those with you, is called self-defense. It’s a hallowed freedom and an inalienable right. Would you sit passively and await your fate because you owe it to some warped sense of “social justice?” During a riot where one person was already reported shot and probably killed? Maybe while your family or children are in the car?

Or would you stomp on the accelerator and get out of Dodge, and damn them who block the way? I know what I would do.

It’s not about their race. It’s about the threat.

And as for Tweeting about it, that’s a normal reaction for which no punishment was due. When you see someone’s life being threatened, exclaiming that they should save it is no vice.

Streiff put it best, noting that “you are under no moral, legal, or ethical obligation to sit there and wait to be dragged from your vehicle.” Absolutely, totally correct. And daring to speak it on Twitter should be no grounds for punishment. The truth is not an offense.

Except to liars.