Of Tea Parties, Then and Now

There is something about the so-called "Tea Party" anti-tax movement of late that truly irks me. I think I have narrowed it down to historical inaccuracy. If you look at the Tea Party faction of American society today, what you see is a hodge podge of angry citizens yelling and hollering incoherently about how much they hate President Obama, Democrats, liberals, and government in general. They claim to be mad about "the direction our country is going in" (which is obviously socialism), but they don't seem to pick out a particular policy they disagree with, or give any justification as to why they are upset with it. They are just pissed off, and they don't want to take it anymore (even though progressives "took it" for the better part of the last 30 years and Democrats have only been in full control of government for less than a year with barely anything to show for it).

When the Boston Tea Party happened in 1773, the colonists were protesting the policies of a foreign government, not just government or taxes in general. The one glaring similarity between the modern Tea Party movement and original colonial protesters, however, is that in both cases they were acting largely against their own best interest. Specifically, allowing the East India Company to export tea directly to the colonies would have had the effect of cheaper tea for the colonists. This would have been good for most colonists, but particularly bad for the wealthier Northern merchants, who were basically the ruling elite class of the time (in the North). These Northern merchants also happened to be the driving force behind the Boston Tea Party.

Then and now, what we see is a ruling class of wealthy elites trying to start a revolution but also making damned sure that it doesn't get too revolutionary. Alternatively phrased, they didn't want the revolution to become a threat to their own power in society: no social change, no liberation for the urban lower classes - simply independence. The British government was only their enemy because they saw it as an obstacle to their own interests. In today's case, the wealthy elites aren't even the ones you see on TV for the most part. They are the ones behind the scenes, pulling the strings. Conservative corporate-funded groups like FreedomWorks as well as multi-millionaire Glenn Beck have brought out the Fox News crowd in hordes to protest, well, something.

Thom Hartmann offers a radically different perspective on the Boston Tea Party, and though it seems contradictory to some of what I have read, it certainly seems plausible. He contends that these Northern merchants were actually the equivalent of the mom-and-pop small business owners of today, protesting against the Wal-Mart of their era, the East India Company. While this contradicts what I have just written, it actually helps to serve the argument that these colonists were not simply opposed to government and taxes. They were opposed specifically to economic regulation by their mother country that was crafted with only Great Britain's interests in mind, heavily unbalanced against the colonist's burgeoning economy. Indeed, at this point, the American economy had outgrown its mother, and at some point it had to detach. It was the natural progression of things.

Would the Tea Party crowd please stop with the more-patriotic-than-thou attitude now?