The Boston Tea Party

Thanks, Con, for this interesting topic. Disguised as Indians: First I'd like to dispose of the claim that participants in the tea party were ("shamefully" and "cowardly") disguised as Indians. When you wear green on St. Patrick's day, you are not pretending to be a shamrock, nor are you in shameful and cowardly manner trying to deflect blame for your drunkenness onto little green plants. No, you are wearing a symbol, not a disguise. The Iroquois League was governed by a kind of parliament or congress called the Counsel of Fifty. The shocking (to Europeans) point is that they had no king. They governed themselves, if you can imagine. [1][2] Some participants in the Boston Tea Party wore some feathers or such, trappings of native culture, not disguises. These trappings were symbols that marked them as supporters of kingless self-government. To stick an American feather in your European hat, while opposing the oppression of a European government is to say, "We don't need your king. We can rule ourselves." No disguises were worn. No attempt was made (shameful, cowardly, or otherwise) to blame the Indians. [3] Cowardly: They knew that England would not have treated them kindly had they been apprehended. Yet these few people (according to Con) took flagrantly illegal action, while openly wearing revolutionary symbols, in the face of British authority, for long enough to dump the cargo of three ships! That's not cowardly; it's brave. And the fewer they were, the braver it was. Illegal and Traitorous: Almost every regime change is illegal according to the old regime. Even the switch from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution was never legally ratified according to the Articles. If illegality amounted to an argument against regime change, we could never have governmental progress. Look at all the "illegalities" occurring in the Arab Spring as people try to escape tyranny. We can only hold our breath, and hope they get something like what they hope for, rather than just another tyranny. (Okay, sometimes we establish no-fly zones.) But it wouldn't make sense for us to say, "No. Fighting tyranny is illegal according to the tyrants, so you shouldn't do it." Think of the people who smuggled bibles into the Soviet Union, and those who smuggled slaves out of the Old South. Do we censure them because their acts were illegal? No, we laud them for their moral courage. It's true that our founding fathers, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and the rest, were traitors. But do we disparage them for that? No, we praise their courage. Consider too, that our oppressor was a British king, and that British lines of succession generally begin with illegal acts: treason or conquest. That is, our challenge to King George's authority was of the very type that established his authority in the first place. "A Few Individuals Mindlessly Instigating Ill Will": "Few," they may have been. I don't see how this is relevant to the argument. They were more than the eight Mormons who started the anti-slave movement in America. They were more than the twelve disciples of Jesus. Sam Adams and his supporters were early adopters of the self-rule meme. I don't see how this is a bad thing. "Individuals": Really? This is a criticism? "Mindlessly": The Crown had lowered the tea tax to the point where some people would be tempted to actually pay it rather than risk the penalties of smuggling. The Crown's reduction of tax was not mindless, nor was the response, which established that not-smuggling is risky too. Wikipedia says, "The Tea Party was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament in 1773. Colonists objected to the Tea Act for a variety of reasons, especially because they believed that it violated their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives. Protesters had successfully prevented the unloading of taxed tea in three other colonies…." [4] "The culmination of a resistance movement"? That doesn't square with Con's claim that this was a few individuals acting mindlessly. "Instigating Ill Will": According to Winston Churchill, the revolution was "inevitable." The American colonies were too far away to be ruled effectively from England. England had been so absorbed in other world affairs, that the Colonies had been effectively under self rule for a long time. So, when England had some slack time in which it could turn its attention to squeezing some profit out of its investments, it was "inevitable" that we would break their tenuous grasp on us. [5] Think about it: there were three possibilities. 1. England could have let us be represented in Parliament; in which case we might have eventually moved the king to Virginia, and left the British Isles as a backwater of empire. 2. We could have, like India, suffered subservience to Britain for longer, until some other Sam Adams, Gandhi, or Robespierre led us to freedom at a later time. 3. We could have separated at the time we actually did, which some people think worked out pretty well. Consent of the Governed: According to the Declaration of Independence, Government gets legitimacy from the consent of the governed. [6] This idea is hard to argue against. Does Con think we should have continued under a government that we regarded as oppressive and tyrannical? Conclusion: Since it doesn't help his case, I let slike Con's claim that first grade is propagandistic. Con called our founding fathers traitors, which is just true, but, in the circumstances, admirable. Con said the Tea Party was illegal, which is also true; but, as I have demonstrated, illegality in response to tyranny is not always a bad thing. Con's every relevant claim has been refuted: The Boston Tea Party was far from mindless, far from cowardly, did not involve disguise or attempt to blame the Indians, was part of a successful freedom movement as opposed to being the whim of some drunks from a bar. Con has the burden of proof. Vote Pro. 1. Some guy, of American Indian extraction, who seemed obsessive on the topic. 2. Wikipedia: The Iroquois League. 3. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbooks Got Wrong, by James W Loewen. It's a great read, highly recommended. 4. Wikipedia: The Boston Tea Party. 5. Some history book by Churchill. Perhaps a volume of the History of the English Speaking Peoples. 6. The Declaration of Independence.