Is Sarah Palin, champion of the Tea Party, actually toeing the line of
18th-century British monarchs? That's William Saletan's argument in
Slate this week. Reading through some of the saber-rattling that preceded the American
Revolution, Saletan
claims that Palin's fiery foreign-policy rhetoric
is of a piece with the bluster of George III and other British
officials during the march to war. Every time Palin demands that the
U.S. "flaunt... its dominance and power," rather than act with
restraint and humility, she strikes a blow, Saletan says, for
"everything the original Tea Party was against."
Palin thinks
American power is above apology because it's "a force for good
throughout this world." But Britain saw itself the same way ... There
was no America, as a nation, until Britain foolishly behaved as Palin
now wants America to behave. Her advice is a prescription for
superpower suicide. If she understood the Boston Tea Party as more than
a slogan, she'd know that.
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