AN NRO ARTICLE ON PALIN & REVERE

The author - Joel J. Miller is the author of The Revolutionary Paul Revere and the vice president of editorial and acquisitions at Thomas Nelson Publishers - is a bona fide conservative, so the Baggers can't ignore his criticism of St. Sarah.

What Sarah Palin Got Wrong — And We Did, Too
June 6, 2011 3:11 P.M.
By Joel J. Miller
National Review Online

Sarah Palin said that Paul Revere “warned the British that they weren’t gonna be taking away our arms, by ringing those bells and making sure, as he’s riding his horse through town, to send those warning shots and bells that we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free.”

As the author of a book about Revere’s life, when I heard this, I groaned. From Revere’s own account, it’s clear that he didn’t fire a shot, he didn’t ring a bell, and he didn’t intend to warn the British of anything (unless you count the townsfolk as British, which they technically were for a little while longer).

In short, Palin basically got the whole story wrong.

Palin should have been humble and admitted she got the story wrong. She could have spun it to say that she got the spirit of the thing right. She could have done a lot of things. But persisting in a flashing-neon error as she’s done is prideful, and that kind of pigheadedness is very unattractive in someone vying for public office. Sarah’s sin was in her lack of humility.