Beck: Libs discredit Paul Revere's own letter to bash Gov. Palin

So desperate is the left to mock her for political purposes, they're willing to ignore historical facts.
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Glenn Beck defends Sarah Palin. She was right about Paul Revere:


Palin Derangement Syndrome leads to deep denial.

h/t: Henry D'Andrea

Rick Richman on the real connection between Palin and Revere

"She speaks with an honesty and directness still found in the ‘artisan class’ to this day"
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Rick Richman, editor of his own blog, Jewish Current Issues, also opines at Commentary Magazine’s blog, Contentions, and at Pajamas Media, where we discovered this essay. Richman sees a connection between Sarah Palin and Paul Revere that has nothing to do with the midnight ride, but is rooted instead in the ideology of small-r republicanism. Revere and Gov. Palin, as members of what Richman calls the artisan class, stand apart from the elites of their respective eras in American history. As non-elites, Revere played an important role in the establishment of the republic, and Sarah Palin's role in helping us preserve our republic is of no less importance:

Richman reminds us how some GOP and conservative elites were seduced by the prospect of Barack Obama as potentially a great president, even though he lacked "the qualifications of the vice-presidential candidate on the opposing ticket — a sitting governor with an impressive record of achievement."

As Joshua Green chronicles in this month’s Atlantic, Palin was a “transformative governor” — repeatedly challenging her own party on ethics violations, reaching out to Democrats, confronting the oil companies that controlled Alaska, vastly improving her state’s fiscal condition. But the very day Palin was selected by John McCain, David Frum described her as an “untested small-town mayor.” Michael Medved asserted that “by any standard” she was “less prepared as commander in chief than Obama” (without specifying the “standards” for comparing her to an untested first-term senator). A few days later, George Will called her “a person of negligible experience.” David Brooks later labeled her a “cancer” to the Republican Party (he evaluated Obama by applying a sartorial standard to his pants).

There was something about Sarah Palin that set her off from the elite from day one, preventing her from joining the club. And this takes us back to Paul Revere.

Jayne E. Triber’s acclaimed 2001 biography of Paul Revere, A True Republican, portrays him as a working man whose artisan status excluded him from the council of the elite in the Revolution and the political leadership thereafter, but who played a critical role for reasons unrelated to his Midnight Ride.

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She may be better as a Paul Revere than a president. But we should acknowledge that as a candidate, she would not likely say anything as dumb as her prior problems were caused by working too hard for her country; nor say anything as incoherent as her health care legislation was great for her state but would be terrible for the nation. If she decides not to run, she will not likely schedule a live TV announcement to say anything as ludicrous as all the external signs said she would win but God told her to keep her TV show.

She speaks with an honesty and directness still found in the “artisan class” to this day, often missing from the eloquence of the elite, which is why — more than three years after the elite denigrated her as an unprepared small-town mayor of negligible experience — she is still a major political force.

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Despite the fact that Obama has failed to meet their great expectations, those same GOP and conservative elites continue to deny the unmistakable signs all around them that the country is crying out for a leader who comes from a similar station in life to their own. No elites. They have witnessed the best the Ivy-league prepared ruling class can do for this country and have found it wanting.

- JP

Boston Herald: Old North Church vicar defends Palin on Revere

“I am amazed that this silly story refuses to die.”
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Rev. Stephen T. Ayres, vicar of Old North Church, told the Boston Herald this weekend he blames the “gotcha”-seeking media for misrepresenting Sarah Palin’s comments made when she stopped at the historic landmark earlier this month:

“I am amazed that this silly story refuses to die,” he said. “I lament what’s happening to our culture. Everything is reduced to one-upmanship or gotcha.”

Ayres said he feels somewhat responsible because he tutored Palin on the particulars of Revere’s 1775 ride and teen exploits as a bell-ringer at the fabled church. So he has fired back at left-leaning bloggers by penning a post of his own on the church Web site.

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Ayres said he welcomed Palin, her parents, and her daughter Piper to the church on the morning of June 2, as she traveled the East Coast on her “One Nation” tour. He gave them the usual “one if by land, two if by sea” lesson, but added in how Revere founded the church’s bell-ringing guild in 1750 as a teen and how he warned the British after being arrested on the night of his famous ride that the minutemen had been alerted.

Hence Palin’s quote to the press that Revere “warned the British that they weren’t going to 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 going to be secure and we were going to be free.”

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The Palin-hating left and their media minions, even when proven wrong by historians and by Revere's own account of his activities, are so obsessed with destroying Gov. Palin that they will never admit that she is right and they are wrong.

- JP

Aaron Gee: NPR defends Palin?

"Sarah Palin is a lightning rod."
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Aaron Gee, who writes for American Thinker, got an unexpected surprise while listening to NPR's "All Things Considered" on the return leg of his daily commute yesterday. The topic of discussion on the afternoon public radio program was "How Accurate Were Palin's Paul Revere Comments?"

Here we go again, I was prepared for the usual "Palin is a moron" storyline. Surprisingly that didn't happen. What I got was Robert Allison, a professor and historian at Suffolk University, telling the NPR host that Palin basically got it right. The interviewer, Melissa Block, tries to cajole a different narrative out of the professor and historian...

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The result is a classic public radio moment wherein the good professor gets to the heart of the matter; Sarah Palin is a lightning rod for the media, and NPR wouldn't have been talking to him about Paul Revere or the American Revolution if it hadn't been for an off the cuff remark from an Alaskan politician.

Gee doesn't think this interview quite turned out the way the left wing NPR producers had imagined.

Audio and transcript of the segment are here.

- JP

John Hayward: The Paul Revere Trap

"My God, she’s a fiend."
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In a Human Events Monday opinion piece John Hayward has a little fun at the Palin-hating elite's expense, as he wrings his hands, with tongue in cheek, over "an obvious act of cruelty from Sarah Palin":

I can believe she was thinking only of her intended audience when she told the Tea Party to “party like it’s 1773.” Of course liberals have no idea when the original Tea Party occurred, and raced to demonstrate their deplorable ignorance of history by attacking her for saying it. She didn’t know they were going to make fools of themselves. She was thinking about the Tea Party enthusiasts she was speaking to, not ignorant lefty bloggers and talking heads.

But this time… this time was on purpose. She knew exactly what she was doing when she said Paul Revere “warned the British that they weren’t going to 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 were going to be secure, and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed.”

She knew that lefty bloggers and media talking heads would walk right into it. She knew they are as ignorant of the Revolution as they were of the Tea Party, and remember nothing about Paul Revere except “one if by land, two if by sea.” She knew damn well they wouldn’t be able to resist the opportunity to stick their noses in the air and arrogantly inform their audiences that she needs to go back to school and take high-school history over again.

There’s no way I’m letting Palin slide on this...

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Frightened liberals flailing around for ways to attack Palin should give up on writing ridiculous diatribes about how she’s endangering the lives of reporters by refusing to provide the exact route of her “One Nation” tour in advance. It’s manifestly absurd to keep bleating that she has no “substance” when she belts out impromptu policy speeches every time she hops off that bus. Instead, you should be complaining about her cruel genius for making liberals look stupid. Only Anthony Weiner can hold a candle to her at that… and she’s obviously having much more fun doing it.

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Heh.

- JP

Sarah Palin: 'I didn't mess up about Paul Revere'

"I know my American history."
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In her Fox News Sunday interview today, Gov. Palin stands by her comments last week about Paul Revere warning the colonists and bluffing the British. Her narrative has been shown -- in Revere's own words and in other historical accounts (here and here) -- to be essentially correct.


h/t: Jim Hoft and Scott Baker

- JP