The current Tea Party movement is not unique in the history of the United States. The part that is unique is the utter ridiculous attempt of the ultra-conservative proponents of this movement to co-opt the first vestiges of our country’s actions towards liberty from British rule in what is now The United States of America.
To get some prospective on this situation is to look at the historical prospective.
Boston Tea Party
While not all participants of the Boston Tea Party were members of the Sons of Liberty, the core of that little episode’s leadership were definitely the Sons of Liberty. I will not try to identify the individual political viewpoints of those people, but I would hazard to guess that they were not in favor of the status quo. Otherwise, they would not have been involved.
The Boston Tea Party was one of the first, if not the first, overt action of the American Revolution leading to a new, independent country.
During the American Revolution, those objecting to those striving to an independent country were referred to as Loyalist and/or Tories.
Ultimately, those Tories that could not live with the new free American government left, most often going to Canada.
Modern-day Tories
In Great Britain, the Tory still exists. It is, as it has always been, the Conservative party. In fact, their motto is encapsulated in their ethos of “God, King, and Country”,
It is not a coincident that the Tory of America in Revolutionary Times and the Tory of Modern Day Great Britain have the same name. Both are Conservative and pro-business political parties. They are also both generally in favor of social norms.
Modern-day Tea Party
Let us be honest: those people who call themselves the Tea Party are really more synonymous to the Tory of old instead of members of the Boston Tea Party. Most certainly they have absolutely no association to the Sons of Liberty that they try to pretend to be associated by attribution. To believe otherwise is to ignore the facts. If they were to be honest they should be called the Tory Party, but then they may not be able to fly the flag as high, now would they.
Given that the original Tories abandoned the United States, voluntarily or otherwise, for Canada at the conclusion of the American Revolution, I find it somewhat ironic that one of the chief figures for the Tea Party is Canadian-born. Don’t you!
