Sarah Palin and King George III

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.