7/3/2006

4 Responses to “Of Course the British Knew Paul Revere Used Codes!”

1. Well, maybe we just read Patterico much more frequently! You might not have quite their traffic, but you do have a better blog.

   Dana (71415b) — 7/4/2006 @ 5:49 am

   
   

2. Just asking, if someone who didn’t agree with Paul Revere’s politics but knew of his secret program to track the British Army’s movements, and that anonymous someone told reporters for the NY Times all about it, and Bill Keller decided to publish that information, and the Brits were thus able to evade detection and win the battle, defeat the American Revolution, and keep the colonies under King George’s thumb, would there be any such thing as a Bill of Rights or freedom of the press today?

   Or, if the colonists had somehow managed to prevail despite the efforts of Bill Keller, would he now be regarded with the same, or greater, opprobrium than Benedict Arnold?

   Black Jack (d8da01) — 7/4/2006 @ 11:24 am

   
   

3. Be honest with me folks, are you rightwingers really so dumb about history or do you just screw around with the facts out of habit. First of all, revealing the one lamp or two lamp “code” would have had all the strategic significance of knowing whether your opponent was going to call heads or tails in the pre-game coin toss. Second, and I know this is going to be very unsettling for you, but the guys with the one lamp/two lamp code were the insurgents…and the troops they were using it against were those of the official government. So here’s the real question: if the New York Times got its hands on a secret document that told whether the British were coming by land or by sea, should they have published it?

   Asinistra (25dfa2) — 7/5/2006 @ 8:19 pm

   
   

4. I feel qualified to answer Asinistra’s comment since I created that cartoon. I’ve seen similar comments on other Blogs and I can no longer bear banging my head on the desk. Notice Patterico termed it a “parody?” Look up that word. The cartoon resonates with people because The New York Times has betrayed the cause of Freedom by what they have published, and the same players would have likely betrayed that cause in 1775. That I created it for July 4th was not an accident. Your comment reminds me of someone who would view a cartoon of Uncle Sam standing between and above the burning World Trade Center buildings on September 11 shaking his fist, and then say, “Wait a minute Uncle Sam is not THAT tall!” If I had been striving for historical and factual accuracy, I wouldn’t have used the Times Roman PC font since it wasn’t available in 1775. Wait a minute … that’s already been tried! — LB

   Spook (5c0afc) — 7/6/2006 @ 1:29 am