This drift towards social engineering

And that is the history that American schoolchildren used to learn.

No, it isnt.  My mother, who went to school before you or Sarah Palin were born, was not taught Mrs. Palins version of this story.  And she went to a conservative finishing school.

So you say, yet strangely the books of the time say something different.

If your mother heard a version that contradicts Palin's version, google up that version.  What book did your mother get it from?

What kids were taught is typefied by "Great stories from great lives" page 48 which http://books.google.com/books?id=LVe5H0n3tncC&pg=PA48 when it describes the midnight ride of Paul Revere talks about guns and never even mentions that the British were going arrest Paul Hancock and Sam Adams.

In that account, the ride is about guns, and nothing but guns.  The whole point of the story is that the British are trying to bottle up the news that they are coming to seize people's guns, and Paul Revere is breaking the containment.

Googling around for books targeted at that audience, from that time, the ride is all about guns in every version of the story.   I cannot find any version, except in more recent books, that his mission was primarily about the planned arrest of Sam Adams.

Googling around for books targeted at that audience, from that time, the ride is all about guns in every version of the story.   I cannot find any version, except in more recent books, that his mission was primarily about the planned arrest of Sam Adams.

http://www.masshist.org/database/img-viewer.php?item_id=99&img_step=1&tpc=&pid=&mode=transcript&tpc=&pid=#page1

From these movements, we expected something serious was [to]
be transacted. On Tuesday evening, the 18th, it was observed, that a number
of Soldiers were marching towards the bottom of the Common.
About 10 o'Clock, Dr. Warren Sent in great haste for me, and beged
that I would imediately Set off for Lexington, where Messrs. Hancock
& Adams were, and acquaint them of the Movement, and that it was
thought they were the objets.

Revere himself said that.

You are saying that children's books didn't say that. You have decided that what's important is how well Mrs. Palin remembers the children's books she heard when she was young, and you present as evidence a children's story printed in 1898.

If that's the standard, it seems to me the children's book we should be looking at would be _Johnny Tremaine_, which I think was by far the most popular fiction about Paul Revere in the 1950's. It says it both ways, in passing. But the book isn't that important, it's nearly 300 pages. What you'd have us judge Palin's memory about would be the movie. That movie came out in 1957. I think I saw it in 1976 but I don't remember it all that well myself. I don't want to download it and look at it again to see what it said. It's not worth it.

So here's what she said, that you're defending:

"He who warned, uh, the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms uh 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 and we were going to be armed," she explained to reporters in Boston, Massachusetts Thursday.

"You realized you messed up about Paul Revere?" Fox News host Chris Wallace noted in an interview with Palin Sunday.

"You know what, I didn't mess up about Paul Revere," Palin replied. "Here is what Paul Revere did. He warned the Americans that the British were coming, the British were coming and they were going to try to take our arms and we have to make sure we were protecting ourselves and shoring up all of our ammunitions and our firearms so they couldn't take it."

She continued: "Remember, the British had been there, many soldiers for seven years in that area. Part of Paul Revere's ride -- it wasn't just one ride -- he was a courier, a messenger. Part of the ride was to warn British that we're already there. You are not going to succeed. You are not going to take American arms. You are not going to beat our own well-armed persons, individual private militia we have. He did warn the British."

This is what you're defending.

We've had Vice Presidents before who sometimes talked to reporters with their right-brain without letting their left-brain interfere. Dan Quayle, for one. And we've gotten some interesting quotes from our current vice president, for that matter.

And all sorts of politicians have said stupid things sometimes. Romney got a lot of bad press because he tried to change his Vietnam stance and said he'd been brainwashed about it. What he was saying was actually reasonable but when he said it that way the media jumped all over him. Ford said that Poland was not dominated by the USSR when everybody believed it was, and then he stood behind it for several days.

Just a few months ago Michelle Bachmann said that Lexington and Concord were in New Hampshire, and then apologised for her mistake. At one point Obama said he'd visited 57 states. He later said he was mistaken, and of course the correct number was 47.

And now here's Palin, she burbles something incoherent and when people tell her it isn't exactly history, she stands behind it. And her "supporters" say she's right, that this is correct history.

What does it take to start with that quote and say it's correct history? Is it four fingers? No, I think it's just one finger, one middle finger stuck out at truth and decency by a bunch of scoundrels.

Googling around for books targeted at that audience, from that time, the ride is all about guns in every version of the story.   I cannot find any version, except in more recent books, that his mission was primarily about the planned arrest of Sam Adams.

http://www.masshist.org/database/img-viewer.php?item_id=99&img_step=1&tpc=&pid=&mode=transcript&tpc=&pid=#page1

Which quotes Paul Revere writing:

we refreshid our selves, we and set off for Concord, to secure the Stores, &c. there

The stores being stores of weapons, and they were securing them from the British, or rather urging the people in Concord to secure them from the British,  As we read elsewhere, one of the steps to that end being ringing the bells.

Googling around for books targeted at that audience, from that time, the ride is all about guns in every version of the story.   I cannot find any version, except in more recent books, that his mission was primarily about the planned arrest of Sam Adams.

http://www.masshist.org/database/img-viewer.php?item_id=99&img_step=1&tpc=&pid=&mode=transcript&tpc=&pid=#page1

Which quotes Paul Revere writing:

we refreshid our selves, we and set off for Concord, to secure the Stores, &c. there

The stores being stores of weapons, and they were securing them from the British, or rather urging the people in Concord to secure them from the British,  As we read elsewhere, one of the steps to that end being ringing the bells.

You're like the old Energizer bunny, no matter how deep a hole you've dug yourself into, you never get tired of digging deeper.

I'll just leave you to it.

Ford said that Poland was not dominated by the USSR when everybody believed it was, and then he stood behind it for several days.

Of course Poland was, at that time, ruled by a puppet government controlled by the USSR. Every American knew that. So Gerald R. Ford had a poor grasp of reality?

Not so fast. A few days before he made that famous remark, the New York Times ran a story claiming that there was a plan afoot in the Kremlin to fully incorporate the countries of Eastern Europe into the Soviet Union as constituent republics - so that Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Rumania would have the same status as Belarus, the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

So what happened was that Ford was trying - without making an explicit threat, which would have caused other problems - to warn the Soviet Union that this would be unacceptable to the United States. His wording may have been clumsy.

Ford said that Poland was not dominated by the USSR when everybody believed it was, and then he stood behind it for several days.

Of course Poland was, at that time, ruled by a puppet government controlled by the USSR. Every American knew that. So Gerald R. Ford had a poor grasp of reality?

Not so fast. A few days before he made that famous remark, the New York Times ran a story claiming that there was a plan afoot in the Kremlin to fully incorporate the countries of Eastern Europe into the Soviet Union as constituent republics - so that Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Rumania would have the same status as Belarus, the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

So what happened was that Ford was trying - without making an explicit threat, which would have caused other problems - to warn the Soviet Union that this would be unacceptable to the United States. His wording may have been clumsy.

To me this sounds like something his staff would come up with afterward to explain it away. It does not sound real at all.

But if it was real, then to me the take-home lesson is: Do not make subtle indirect threats to foreign nations as part of Presidential candidate debates.

Ford had lots of ways to communicate with the USSR, but he chose to do it on TV when he needed to communicate with US voters and so he lost the election. He might have lost it anyway, maybe it was already inevitable he'd lose, but that made it definite.

To me this sounds like something his staff would come up with afterward to explain it away. It does not sound real at all.

It's possible he just read the news item, and didn't remember it properly, and was flustered and confused by it.

It wasn't a reason he used to explain his statement. But I do remember seeing the news story at the time, and I made the connection right away. I'm trying to hunt it up so that I can provide the cite, but on the Internet at least, I'm having no luck.

To me this sounds like something his staff would come up with afterward to explain it away. It does not sound real at all.

It's possible he just read the news item, and didn't remember it properly, and was flustered and confused by it.

It wasn't a reason he used to explain his statement. But I do remember seeing the news story at the time, and I made the connection right away. I'm trying to hunt it up so that I can provide the cite, but on the Internet at least, I'm having no luck.

You may have found the reason he said that. My point is that it confused voters. They didn't understand how he could have thought what it sounded like he said. They would have understood if he had meant "western europe" instead of "eastern europe" and just said the wrong thing, like Obama saying 57 when he meant 47. But everybody believed that the USSR dominated eastern europe. And at first he stood by his statement.

If Obama were to say "Global warming is real and we have to stop it now", probably 20% of the public would say "At last! He sees the truth!" and another 20% would say "He's an idiot, we've got to get rid of him", and a bunch of people wouldn't know what to think. (I'd think there's something real there but I'm  scared of what the US government might try to do about it.) When Ford said that about the USSR, it was more like 99% who thought "He's an idiot".

Whatever he intended to do, it didn't come out right.

Ford said that Poland was not dominated by the USSR when everybody believed it was, and then he stood behind it for several days. Of course Poland was, at that time, ruled by a puppet government controlled by the USSR. Every American knew that. So Gerald R. Ford had a poor grasp of reality?

So what happened was that Ford was trying - without making an explicit threat, which would have caused other problems - to warn the Soviet Union that this would be unacceptable to the United States. His wording may have been clumsy.

If you want to send a message, use a phone.

If you want to send a message, use a phone.

What, not Western Union?

western Union doesn't do the message thing anymore.