What the Tea Party doesn't understand

I've watched with amusement and fascination the emergence of the so-called "Tea Party" in our American polity. It is truly fascinating and encouraging, in a way, to see so many people fired up about any worthwhile issue.

And the topic of the future of our government's size and scope is one worth debating. When I say I am amused, it is not a condescending "Hey, look at the freaks" kind of amusement but rather the mirth of someone seeing, once again, how fictions about history are perpetrated. I laugh only to keep from crying.

What the tea party doesn't understand is what the original Boston Tea Party was all about. Let's look back.

Over the first 100 years of significant settlement in the colonies, a lot of support and protection from England and The Netherlands was provided. The Dutch helped us out more than you can ever imagine, but they never had sovereignty over the colonies to any significant degree. England supplied the "protection" for commercial trade interests and His Royal Highness's subjects on the seas and Great Lakes, rivers and territory of the American frontier.

England's Parliament and His Majesty had some quaint notions about paying for military necessities back in those days. They actually had to come up with sufficient tax revenues to pay for their various wars with France and Spain over events in and around the world. England had also just fought a very protracted, bloody and expensive war in North America to finally break the French/Indian alliance and make the new frontier safer for continued American colonial expansion.

You might have heard of this conflict vaguely in some old history lesson you had. It was referred to as "The French and Indian War".

So Parliament, again, quaintly, tries to charge a tax to the colonist to help offset this costly investment in the security and prosperity of the colonies. THIS is something the colonist do not like.

Now, don't get me wrong, the tea tax was onerous because it was so regressive. And there were many other assessments colonist had to pay for prior to this and ongoing. And "taxation without representation" is a fundamental worth standing firm against. The list of perceived slights and deprecations that T. Jefferson eventually listed in his now famous declaration were legitimate.

But let's be clear. The colonist, in revolting visibly against the tea tax, were NOT arguing necessarily for SMALLER government or less taxes, but the right to FORM THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT if they couldn't be properly given representation in the current legislature.

The Tea Tax Revolt was not about smaller government, it was about us not having a say in government. No one was saying that government was too big in the colonies circa 1760, but rather that we didn't have enough government, responsive to the colonist and their desires locally.