Replies

"Prof. ALLISON: Well, he was - he also was a bell ringer. That is, he rang the bells at Old North Church as a boy. But he personally is not getting off his horse and going to ring bells. He's telling other people - and this is their system before Facebook, before Twitter, before NPR, this was the way you get a message out is by having people ring church bells and everyone knows there is an emergency.

And by this time, of course, the various town Committees of Safety, militia knew what the signals were, so they knew something was afoot. So this is no longer a secret operation for the British.

Revere isn't trying to alert the British, but he is trying to warn them. And in April of 1775, no one was talking about independence. We're still part of the British Empire. We're trying to save it. So this is a warning to the British Empire what will happen if you provoke Americans.

BLOCK: And Sarah Palin also was saying there that Paul Revere's message to the British in his warning was: you're not going to take American arms. You know, basically a Second Amendment argument, even though the Second Amendment didn't exist then.

Prof. ALLISON: Yeah. She was making a Second Amendment case. But, in fact, the British were going out to Concord to seize colonists' arms, the weapons that the Massachusetts Provincial Congress was stockpiling there.

So, yeah, she is right in that. I mean, and she may be pushing it too far to say this is a Second Amendment case.

....snip

BLOCK: So you think basically, on the whole, Sarah Palin got her history right.

Prof. ALLISON: Well, yeah, she did.... "

Source: NPR

GonzoII said: "We're still part of the British Empire."

It's actually quite helpful to the liberal revisionists to refer to the enemy as the "British". It evokes an image of a freedom-loving people occupied by a foreign power. In this way, it is possible to suggest that the armed resistance of our Founders would not be justified against our own government.

As the statement in posting #35 shows, Revere never referred to the "British". He describes "soldiers" and the "ministerial army" as the enemy of the people. He is alerting his countrymen to the armed oppression being committed by his own government.

If there was never a time when our government could become our enemy, then there would be little need for the Second Amendment. The government would be eager to supply us arms to fight a national enemy. Such is not the case when the government is the enemy. Our Founders knew this and insisted on the addition of the Second Amendment to prevent the government from disarming us.