Commentary: Sarah Palin, Paul Revere and the quest for truth and understanding
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How Sarah Palin and Paul Revere made me more honest and saved me from being a self-deluded fool.
You might remember last June that Sarah Palin was asked by a reporter what she had taken away from her visit to Old North Church and Paul Revere’s house in Boston. She said, “We saw where Paul Revere hung out as a teenager, which was something new to learn. And you know, he who warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms, by ringing those bells and making sure, as he is 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.”
An uproar ensued in the national media deriding Palin for her whimsical synopsis of revolutionary history. The left had a field day sniping at Palin for her alleged butchery of American history.
I was inclined to agree when virtually every media outlet pounced on Palin for her historical “gaffe.”
I’m no Palin fan, and I’ll never be. I do not like her “folksy” brand of star-spangled gobbledygook that appeals to gut level thinking and pits Americans against Americans. Hearing Palin speak, I’m not sure that she knows exactly what she is saying.
“Hang her high!” I thought as I gleefully watched the media pile on.
In response to the media frenzy Palin’s words stirred, Melissa Block of NPR’s All Things Considered, interviewed Professor Robert Allison, a history professor at Suffolk University, on June 6, 2011. They analyzed her statement, phrase by phrase, weighing the veracity of each.
To conclude the interview, Melissa Block asked Professor Allison, “So you think basically, on the whole, Sarah Palin got her history right?”
Professor Allison said, “Well, yeah, she did. And remember, she is a politician. She’s not an historian. And God help us when historians start acting like politicians, and I suppose when politicians start writing history.”
Hearing the interview heralded one of those occasions where I quietly chuckle to myself having to admit, I got it wrong. Such vulnerable moments are always followed by the uneasy feeling of wondering what other thousand things are out there that I have taken aim at and missed the mark, yet deceive myself imagining I hit a bulls eye.
People can’t seem to help themselves. I am as guilty as anyone. We become like sports fanatics with our politics–my team, right or wrong. Fanaticism clouds our reason and objectivity, hindering our ability to see life from a broader and more honest perspective, and we become self-deluded fools only seeing and hearing what we want to believe.
The key is to stay objective and never quit trying to see things from multiple perspectives. As soon as you have honed in on only one point of view, you’ve let down your intellectual guard and integrity suffers.
I still don’t like Sarah Palin, though.
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I would take it a step further. It doesn’t matter whether she got the history right — she is a politician. It is really time we got this playground taunting out politics. Joe Biden is a great resource for malapropisms. I could probably fill a whole U.S. Congress with homespun philosophers that I would prefer over this corrupted bunch. I could add Obama and his administration to that assembly as well.
The first thing we want to know from the captain of ship is what his or her destination is. If he is not headed where we want to go, the rest does not matter. Similarly, we first want to know what our political candidates’ political goals and values are. Then we can consider how competent they would be in accomplishing those things, their political integrity, and such. Mastery of trivia events shouldn’t even be on the list.
It is time to raise the standards of political discussion, and let it start with us. Thank you Mr. Hinds for starting that process.
“you’ve let down your intellectual guard and integrity suffers.” Well said Collin and great read.
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. – John Stuart Mill
That’s it, Holte. I wanted a nice quote to spice this up.