Every kid, whether it be when they ride their bike right into a shrub, fail to hit a baseball off of a tee or decide that bagel bites belong in the DVD player, is told by their parents that they need to learn from their mistakes. There's a reason you don't see many people in their thirties prodding electrical outlets with forks and CEOs don't put on Superman underoos and think they can fly. It's the simple idea that if you do something wrong, you admit to it and move on with your life, knowing one more thing you shouldn't repeat.
It's a bit easy to pick on Sarah Palin. She's a maddening combination of brainless populism and tawdry politics, who inspires people for all of the wrong reasons. And she never fails to disappoint. Let's take a look at what she said in her home town during her goodbye tour (which brings to mind Cher's persistent departure and re-emergence).
"Let us continue to love our country, be proud of our country, never apologize for our country."
If taken step by step, her sentence starts out fine. Love our country? Right on. Be proud of it? Can do. Never apologize? Wait a second...
What odd compulsion makes people believe that one cannot be proud of an ideal and at the same time admit that said ideal has, at times, been tarnished? It's akin to a startling case of overcompesation, of pride built up over the paranoia of being exposed as less-then-perfect. It's the same mentality that drives middle-aged yuppies to take secretaries into the supply closet and then drive home in unnecessary sports cars, turns parents into manic obsessives who pour their fails dreams into their kids and ultimately creates a completely false fantasy world where no one did anything wrong.
Let's go over all of the wonderful things America has done that we should feel no guilt over, shall we?
Nope, there's nothing regrettable there. We really have been perfect for hundreds of years, haven't we?