Didn’t Paul Revere Warn People About Scary Government Activity?

Maybe I didn;t pay enough
attention in history class, but my memory of Paul Revere was that
he, and the Sons of Liberty, were pretty active in warning
Americans about the unsettling activities of the government
officials with which they were burdened. Pretty Edward Snowden-ish,
really. So President Obama’s invocation of the names of people who
were, in Revere’s case, arrested for their actions (just like his

administration wants to do to the modern thorn in the government’s
side) as a precursor to the National Security Agency and its
snooping on the American people seems a bit…off.

Said
President Obama:

At the dawn of our Republic, a small, secret surveillance
committee borne out of the “The Sons of Liberty” was established in
Boston. The group’s members included Paul Revere, and at night they
would patrol the streets, reporting back any signs that the British
were preparing raids against America’s early Patriots.

Throughout American history, intelligence has helped secure our
country and our freedoms.

Yeah…I don’t know that Paul Revere, Sam Adams, John Hancock,
and company were really NSA sort of people.

To his credit, Obama conceded that “even the United States
proved not to be immune to the abuse of surveillance.” But on this,
the 53rd anniversary of President Eisenhower’s speech
warning about the threat posed by a growing military-industrial
complex, and cautioning that “only an alert and knowledgeable
citizenry” can ensure “that security and liberty may prosper
together,” the current president sounded positively pissy about the
fallout from Snowden’s revelations about mass surveillance and the
“readiness of some to assume the worst motives by our
government.”

Perhaps we assume the worst because we found out that the
government was looking over all of our shoulders only from a guy
who had to blow the whistle and then flee half-way around the
world?

I’m pretty sure that the British government was annoyed by Paul
Revere and the hornet’s nest he helped stir up and wished it would
all just go away, just as President Obama is flustered by the
objections of so many Americans to the secretive surveillance
state. Overall, he has a lot more in comon with General Gage than
with the guy who worked out a system for warning people already
concerned about government excess that the forces of the state were
on the march.