The Tea Parties are a joke

Many of the participants of the recent national Tea Parties throughout the country, are very proud of the fact that they are actively involved with the push for our federal government to return to representing the interests of the general public. These peaceful demonstrators invoke the spirit of the Boston Tea Party, which started the firestorm that became the American Revolution. The level of enthusiasm and the amount of increased participation by American citizens to affect their own political and economic destinies are commendable. Unfortunately, their efforts are laughable. When these current Tea Parties are compared with the original Tea party, they severely lack the "punch" that was contained in the 1773 event. The sad part is that our current situation in history is more serious than it was during that time.

A brief history of the Boston Tea Party reveals the true mood of the people at that time. It was 1773. The colonist here in America were fed up with the amount of taxes being placed on them by King George the III. In the years leading up to that time, the Stamp Act, the Townshends Act, and the continued effort to tax tea enraged the colonist, especially in Boston. They were harrassed by British Redcoats, the enforcement arm of the Crown. The Redcoats continually bullied the colonists and insured that the King's laws were being implemented and followed in the colonies. These enforcers even resorted to murder to keep the colonist under control (the Boston Massacre of 1770). On December 16, 1773, the colonials in Boston had enough. After demanding that ships with a large shipments of tea be ejected from the Boston Harbor without paying any duties on their cargo, the Harbor Master, who was loyal to the Crown, refused their demand. The colonist, who had gathered together that day, were infuriated by the rejection. A small band of 200 of these men, dressed as indians and armed with hatchets, boarded the ships that evening and spent hours dumping barrels of tea into the Harbor. King George's response to this action was to place more burdens on the colonials in the form of the Intolerables Act. This Act caused the Boston Harbor to be shut down (embargo). This ignited the spirit of revolution in all of the American colonies creating a call for action.

The Bostonians were angry. They didn't want to have a conversation with King George. They wanted the monarch to stop using bullies to force them to pay money in the form of taxes. They had no representation in the Britsh Parliment. Yet, they were being forced to give up portions their productivity in homage to the King, for the sake of the Crown. From the British government's perspective, the colonist were engaging in terrorism. Their disobedience was a direct challenge to the Crown's power. The Boston Tea Party was not just a protest. It as an act of Civil disobedience (not peaceful disobedience, but civil). Fast foward to the 21st century.

In April of 2009, hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people got together in various states and had what we refer to as "Tea Parties". These events, which took place on the deadline the IRS requires for Income Tax filing, were meant to invoke the spirit of resistence felt in Boston in 1773. People were upset. People did protest. People did not take action.

Today, our country is in much more of a crisis than during the days of the American Revolution. In those days, the people only had hope, and the possibilities of what the opportunity of self direction could bring. They had no garauntees of success in establishing a strong nation. They did not have a strong infrastruction to provide support for their endeavors to gain sovereignty. They didn't even have a very strong economy. All they did have was a vision of what could be, the heart to yearn for something more than what they had, and the willingness and determination to act on it. Today, we live in the greatest nation on Earth, with the greatest governing document the world has ever seen. However, like so many other empires before us, America is in trouble. We are suffering from the very typical diseases that have destroyed all of the empires of the past: Runaway inflation and the expansion of currency without a corresponding expansion in productivity, high taxation coupled with low employment, a military spread out in multiple theaters of conflict, a crumbling infrastructure, and a welfare state, where the goverment make promises to take care of all of its citizens without those citizens having to work for that benefit. These are the symptoms of an empire in decline. Our leaders, who are very bright and intelligent individuals, are aware of this history. We are all somewhat aware of this history, because unlike all of the populations of nations in the past, we live in the information age, where information and education is not hidden and is easily accessible. The U.S. dollar is entrenched in the economies of the world. That is the foothold of our Empire. If The U.S. takes a significant fall, it will bring the whole world with it. If our leaders, who we elect because they are the best and the brightest we have to offer, know that our country is headed on the path of destruction, why are we still on that path?. If they know the problems and the causes of the problems, why are they not avoiding it? Why don't they have solutions for problems that are almost identical to the problems that have happened in the past hundreds of times? For any reasonable person, it would seem that with all of the resources available to our country's leadership today, they would make better descisions in regard to the direction of our country. Unless... the country is going exactly where these people want it to go.

Americans have asked for answers and change from our leaders for years. Have we gotten any answers that were true? Recently, we've had a great and welcome change, but... into what? Americans are publicly voicing that something is wrong. We have done this for years. I wonder how long the Revolutionaries would have talked about today's current problems before taking action. It was nine years from the time that the British levied burdensome taxes on the colonist in 1765 to the beginnings of the Revolutionary war in 1774. The only events that we have in recent history that are simular to the Boston Tea Party are the events of the 1960's, and its enviroment of civil disobedience.

The idea of a "Tea Party" sounds soft. Have we as citizens of the greatest nation in history been reduced to having our basics rights as free men and women expressed in the confines of a mild protest where the touch phrase is "tea" and "party"? The men of the Revolution made The Boston Tea Party an event that stuck in the mind of a tyrant and ingrained itself history. They didn't care that a corrupt tyrant thought of them as a terrorist. Today, we gently nudge the people, who we believe should represent us better, to try to gather a sliver of attention from them, so that they may or may not pay attention to our concerns. Maybe, instead of "Tea Parties", we should have Mike's Hard Lemonade parties or Vodka parties. It seems that the Tea Partyists need something with a little more kick to get them to act simular to those Patriots from Boston in 1773.

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