Next time your kids complain about having to do their history homework, you can just pull up this video and point out that, whether you’re right or wrong, at least SOUNDING like you know what you’re talking about when it comes to history is important. You never know when an annoying reporter is going to ask you about Paul Revere.
The internet has been aflutter for days over how dumb Sarah Palin’s response when questioned about the famous American folk hero, Paul Revere. Even if you remember nothing about Revere, it’s hard to forget, “the British are coming, the British are coming,” Revere’s famous (but totally fictional) line from Longfellow’s famous poem about Revere’s part in warning the American revolutionary forces that the British were coming to arrest them. Palin, however, couldn’t come up with the famous lines when put on the spot, and stammered something about Revere warning the British that the American militias were armed and would not stand for the British trying to stop them from practicing their right to bear arms. A right which, of course, they didn’t have at the time because they were still British citizens.
True to form, rather than admitting that she was wrong, Palin and her supporters have stubbornly defended her version of events. In fact, some of them have been attempting to edit Wikipedia’s page on Revere to include her version of events. Even digging out the fact that apparently Revere was captured by the British and did, in fact, tell them that there were armed militants in Boston. But, that information was shared at gunpoint, under threat of death. It hardly qualifies as the purpose of Revere’s ride, which was actually to quietly warn the leaders like Samuel Adams and John Hancock that they were going to be arrested. According to “Paul Revere’s Ride” by David Hackett Fischer, Revere was trying to lead his captors away from Lexington (where Sam Adams and John Hancock were hidden) by telling them danger awaited them there.
Whether Palin really knew about this nuance of American history or not is anyone’s guess (we’re guessing not) but we’re hoping that incidents like this will help to erode the attitudes that some public figures, like Palin, have demonstrated towards education by pointing out how important it is to have a basic understanding of American history.
