The midnight ride of Scott Brown

The headline writers should send thank-you notes to Senator Scott Brown. The most popular play on words I've seen is "The Scott Heard 'Round the World," a tip of the hat to Emerson's "Concord Hymn" about the beginning of the American Revolution. That shot came at the fight with the British at Concord.

But the first interaction with the British was at Lexington Green, when 38 patriots, outnumbered 20 to one, stood their ground. Their captain's phrase that early morning resonated once again last week with the citizens of Massachusetts: "Don't fire unless you are fired on; but if they want a war, let it begin here."

Jon Keller was out in front of the election with an op-ed titled, "The Backlash is Coming! The Backlash is Coming!" (The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 15). That, of course, is a play on Longfellow's "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere," when Revere warned, "The British are coming! The British are Coming!" While that is the line most of us remember, the words that best inform today's politics appear near the end of that storied work.