Dec

17

Alan wrote yesterday "on this day (December 16th) in 1773 the Boston Tea Party took place as American colonists boarded a British ship and dumped more than three hundred chests of tea overboard to protest tea taxes. Today we have many politicans we need to put overboard and start fresh with honest people."

It is a nice fairy tale, and it will be told as long as people keep quoting Jefferson about the tree of liberty being watered by the blood of patriots. (Jefferson, of course, came nowhere near any of the blood and was a notoriously unsuccessfuly hortoculturalist.)

The Boston Tea Party was an organized riot by the tea smugglers of Boston who were genuinely peeved that the British Crown had had the wit to ignore its own Navigation Acts for once and land tea that, even with the tax, was less expensive that the Dutch tea the smugglers were bringing in. The British tea was thrown in the harbor because it threatened the smugglers' profits. The best modern analogy is a riot by Union workers beating up "scabs" — i.e. people willing to work for less.

The Tea Party was not a success politically. The people in Boston knew what it was about and were angry that they had to keep paying more for their daily drug. But the Tea Party was, inadvertently, the start of the Revolution. That is why we have the myth. The Home Office in Britain reacted with more than the usual executive idiocy and decided that the answer to an unpopular minor riot was the military occupation of the entire city of Boston, the shutting down of all trade and commerce, including local fishing and the confiscation of privately-owned fire arms. That gets us to Concord and Lexington and, after that, there was no turning back — even if the Continental Congress itself thought that its first action should be not a Declaration of Independence, but a petition to the Crown for a cease fire.

Jeff Watson adds:

Not only were they smugglers, but many were Free and Accepted Masons, and most of the planning went on for the Tea Party, and other acts against the Crown, in Masonic Lodges. The whole Revolutionary War was stamped with the imprint of Masonry, and the importance of Masons in the Revolution should never be underestimated.


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  1. Nick Pribus on December 19, 2009 6:58 pm

    Speaking of Boston today was cancelled the flight from Logan to Aruba due to a quite impressive snowstom on the east coast. With New York sutting down as well and all the smiling happy denizens of the city gleefully counting their extra day in the sun (there was dancing on the beach) and all those poor unfortunate souls frozen up north wondering when oh when will it be their turn, it got me to wondering. In this amazing internet age why does Wall Street need to be on wall street. I have been to the big banks and seen those traders and bankers and hedge fund gurus, big brain quant quys with pedegreed resumes sitting row upon row in their wall street and midtown offices staring at multipsle screen speaking simultaneously on two phones, not talking to each other, and wondering when oh when will they figure out their trade no longer depends on proximity in the frozen north, Office mates text each oither from next door cubicles, their bosses call their cell phone from down the hall, my boss scarecly knows if I am in the office at all, he was downright surprised to find I was in Aruba, but still made daily requirement of work, and the clients oblivious to my location. I should rent a proxy to sit dressed as me at my desk and direct trade from 7 mile beach…

    Who’se with me, lets build a new investment bank franchise in the islands, runs exactly the way it does in new york, but with much much happier employees.

    I am ready for a tea party of my own to break up the nonsense baked into the wall street trade mentality that it must somehow be in new york to be successful, time you move the trades to the tax free island where the compensation is not for the annual bunus anymore the the top condo spot on the beach, let the biggest swining brain in the room have the honors.

    I am ready to not just domicile in the islands, but run it here who will join me in this outside the box experiment, who will drive the catamaran taking toiurists on ovepriced snorkle tours with free cheap run to pay our way home if it doesnt work out.

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