Speaking of Tea Party or Dr. Strangelove Comes to Town by SHINYGOODGUY

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Speaking of Tea Party or Dr. Strangelove Comes to Town

POSTED BY: SHINYGOODGUY
UPDATED: Thursday, October 3, 2013 19:23
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Thursday, October 3, 2013 6:06 PM

It has been oft mentioned that the Tea Party has been so coined because of their Patriotism, and their general understanding of the law of the land, The Constitution.

I was curious about that. So I did a little digging and found:

The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred on December 16, 1773. It took 3 hours to dump 342 crates of tea overboard off 3 ships into Boston Harbor. The protest was against the Tea Act of 1773: The “tea partiers” were not protesting a tax hike, but a corporate tax break." Sound familiar!? This was more about economics than anything else, it gets better.

The Tea Act was a government bailout for a company on the brink of financial collapse, the flailing East India Company. The English Parliament passed a law which would help the company stay afloat, but without any input from the colonists. Outrage ensued, but not for obvious reasons, but more for commercial interests. Why is this important, read on. The main organizer of the Tea Party protest was John Hancock, the Tea Act threatened the livelihood of entrepreneurs, both legal and otherwise, and wealthy merchants, such as the aforementioned Hancock.

The destruction of the 92,000 pounds of tea, estimated at today's value at one million dollars, was condemned by the father of our country George Washington, the original patriot (go ahead, I dare you to criticize George). He felt that private property was sacred, even though it belonged to, what turned out to be, the enemy. He thought that the tea party was a criminal act. "Many Americans shared Washington’s sentiment and viewed the Boston Tea Party as an act of vandalism by radicals rather than a heroic patriotic undertaking."

Does anyone here notice a pattern? Is this sinking in at all? A few knuckleheads take it upon themselves to "act" and strike a blow, but for what and for whom?

"It was the British reaction to the Boston Tea Party, not the event itself, that rallied Americans." The British overreacted and placed a series of countermeasures to try and recoup the monies lost in the Tea Party. Those restrictions and laws came to be known as the Intolerable Acts, which caused the colonists to form the first Continental Congress. By the way, the Tea Act protests spread to other colonies but none were as notable as the Boston Tea Party.

I always thought that the Tea Party was wrongly named because, like most folk, I believed the "protest" was an act of patriotism, not vandalism. It turns out that I was dead wrong, the Tea Party is aptly named for the shear disregard of anyone's interests but their own. I wonder if people realize that these "politicians" are using them to gain power and prestige (and privilege) and not to serve the people. The Constitution was written by those same interested parties, who saw a way to break away and profit from, the new way of things to come.

It is my contention that their near-brilliant handiwork produced an ideal that many have tried to imitate, but few have duplicated, and triggered a revolution that aspires to what amounts to the Golden Rule. But more than that, it inspires the most commonly used and underestimated fundamental aspect of the human spirit - FREEDOM.

SGG

(facts derived from History in Headlines, an article by Christopher Klein
10 Things You May Not Know about the Boston Tea Party)

http://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-bosto
n-tea-party

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Thursday, October 3, 2013 7:23 PM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Excellent, thank you Shiny. We've touched on why the Tea Party isn't emulating what they THINK they are before, but that does it in depth. And it depended on people NOT knowing the facts, just the myth, that so many jumped on board...ignorance of facts is how they gave themselves that unfortunate brand of "tea baggers" as well, and both show how easy it is to manipulate people.

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