[Sam Hill]

It's a dumb mistake, but not tremendously weird. From the OED:

faint, a. Forms: 4 (and 9 in sense 1 b) feint, 4­6 fainte, faynt(e, feynt(e, 6 Sc. fant(e, 4­ faint.
[a. OF. faint, feint feigned, sluggish, cowardly, pa. pple. of faindre, feindre (mod.F. feindre) to feign, in early use also refl. to avoid one’s duty by false pretences, to shirk, skulk.]

[prion]

It's a dumb mistake, but not tremendously weird

Blowing a common cliche is a damn strange error to come out of a professional writer in a major venue like National Review. It runs twice, so it's not a simple typo. Either the editor didn't catch it, or the editor is the one that changed it. Or there is no editor and the writer muffed it.

When somebody substitutes a word in an otherwise common phrase, there's no point defining the word. If I took someone to task for saying "here, here" would you read the definition of "here" to me?

I keep re-reading it to see if there's some ultra clever pun going on, but I'm not seeing it.