Who is Paul Revere and Why Truth Matters

During my childhood, rhymes and poems were an easy way to help remember things. One of my favorites, when studying American history was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1860 classic that begins:

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,–
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm.”

I think I read one or two historical novels, written for elementary age school children, that further impressed the information into my mind of what it must have been like during the American Revolution when former British citizens decided to staunchly defend their right to establish an independent self-governed state. Paul Revere, a silversmith, who heard the call to action, was one of the heroes that warned, “The British are coming. The British are coming.”

So when I heard on the news a few days ago that Sarah Palin had made a statement implying that Paul Revere was communicating with the British rather than alerting local residents of their arrival and then refusing to admit, “Hey I made a mistake” that just seemed the culmination in a series of errors in judgement made by many of our “World Leaders” during the past month. Bad enough that politicians and celebrities are making errors in judgement from secretly fathering children and hiding their existence while running for public office to sending inappropriate photos of themselves over the web, but to then attempt to re-write history rather than admit an error in historical knowledge???? It seems a poor reflection on our Western Culture that so many individuals do not feel comfortable with admitting they are not perfect. Who is?
Evidently Palin does not feel comfortable admitting how little she knows of American history when she was making a point of taking herself and her family on an “American History Tour”. She can still study and learn what really took place and share what she learned with her devoted fans. She might actually gain some respect from some disinterested bystanders. But no, she has to encourage her supporters to attempt to change the entries in Wikipedia.
Pick up any newspaper or magazine (including ours) and you’ll find a list of corrections. Mistakes are made and for the record they should be corrected. Otherwise the result is more mistakes are made and lies are told to cover the truth which is why truth matters. No, we can’t get always get it right but the truth is what we should be trying to achieve. The goal should be to do our best, whatever task we are trying to do, and if our best falls short…well, than try it again.