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TechnoratiThe Real Boston Tea Party was an Anti-Corporate Revolt
CNBC Correspondent Rick Santelli called for a "Chicago Tea Party" on Feb 19th in protesting President Obama's plan to help homeowners in trouble. Santelli's call was answered by the right-wing group FreedomWorks, which funds campaigns promoting big business interests, and is the opposite of what the real Boston Tea Party was. FreedomWorks was funded in 2004 by Dick Armey (former Republican House Majority leader & lobbyist); consolidated Citizens for a Sound Economy, funded by the Koch family; and Empower America, a lobbying firm, that had fought against healthcare and minimum-wage efforts while hailing deregulation.
Anti-tax "tea party" organizers are delivering one million tea bags to a Washington, D.C., park Wednesday morning - to promote protests across the country by people they say are fed up with high taxes and excess spending.
The real Boston Tea Party was a protest against huge corporate tax cuts for the British East India Company, the largest trans-national corporation then in existence. This corporate tax cut threatened to decimate small Colonial businesses by helping the BEIC pull a Wal-Mart against small entrepreneurial tea shops, and individuals began a revolt that kicked-off a series of events that ended in the creation of The United States of America.
They covered their faces, massed in the streets, and destroyed the property of a giant global corporation. Declaring an end to global trade run by the East India Company that was destroying local economies, this small, masked minority started a revolution with an act of rebellion later called the Boston Tea Party.
On a cold November day in 1773, activists gathered in a coastal town. The corporation had gone too far, and the two thousand people who'd jammed into the meeting hall were torn as to what to do about it. Unemployment was exploding and the economic crisis was deepening; corporate crime, governmental corruption spawned by corporate cash, and an ethos of greed were blamed. "Why do we wait?" demanded one at the meeting, a fisherman named George Hewes. "The more we delay, the more strength is acquired" by the company and its puppets in the government. "Now is the time to prove our courage," he said. Soon, the moment came when the crowd decided for direct action and rushed into the streets.
That is how I tell the story of the Boston Tea Party, now that I have read a first-person account of it. While striving to understand my nation's struggles against corporations, in a rare book store I came upon a first edition of "Retrospect of the Boston Tea Party with a Memoir of George R.T. Hewes, a Survivor of the Little Band of Patriots Who Drowned the Tea in Boston Harbor in 1773," and I jumped at the chance to buy it. Because the identities of the Boston Tea Party participants were hidden (other than Samuel Adams) and all were sworn to secrecy for the next 50 years, this account is the only first-person account of the event by a participant that exists. As I read, I began to understand the true causes of the American Revolution.
I learned that the Boston Tea Party resembled in many ways the growing modern-day protests against transnational corporations and small-town efforts to protect themselves from chain-store retailers or factory farms. The Tea Party's participants thought of themselves as protesters against the actions of the multinational East India Company.
Although schoolchildren are usually taught that the American Revolution was a rebellion against "taxation without representation," akin to modern day conservative taxpayer revolts, in fact what led to the revolution was rage against a transnational corporation that, by the 1760s, dominated trade from China to India to the Caribbean, and controlled nearly all commerce to and from North America, with subsidies and special dispensation from the British crown.
Hewes notes: "The [East India] Company received permission to transport tea, free of all duty, from Great Britain to America..." allowing it to wipe out New England-based tea wholesalers and mom-and-pop stores and take over the tea business in all of America. "Hence," wrote, "it was no longer the small vessels of private merchants, who went to vend tea for their own account in the ports of the colonies, but, on the contrary, ships of an enormous burthen, that transported immense quantities of this commodity ... The colonies were now arrived at the decisive moment when they must cast the dye, and determine their course ... "
A pamphlet was circulated through the colonies called The Alarm and signed by an enigmatic "Rusticus." One issue made clear the feelings of colonial Americans about England's largest transnational corporation and its behavior around the world: "Their Conduct in Asia, for some Years past, has given simple Proof, how little they regard the Laws of Nations, the Rights, Liberties, or Lives of Men. They have levied War, excited Rebellions, dethroned lawful Princes, and sacrificed Millions for the Sake of Gain. The Revenues of Mighty Kingdoms have entered their Coffers. And these not being sufficient to glut their Avarice, they have, by the most unparalleled Barbarities, Extortions, and Monopolies, stripped the miserable Inhabitants of their Property, and reduced whole Provinces to Indigence and Ruin. Fifteen hundred Thousands, it is said, perished by Famine in one Year, not because the Earth denied its Fruits; but [because] this Company and their Servants engulfed all the Necessaries of Life, and set them at so high a Price that the poor could not purchase them."
After protesters had turned back the Company's ships in Philadelphia and New York, Hewes writes, "In Boston the general voice declared the time was come to face the storm."
The citizens of the colonies were preparing to throw off one of the corporations that for almost 200 years had determined nearly every aspect of their lives through its economic and political power. They were planning to destroy the goods of the world's largest multinational corporation, intimidate its employees, and face down the guns of the government that supported it.
The queen's corporation
The East India Company's influence had always been pervasive in the colonies. Indeed, it was not the Puritans but the East India Company that founded America. The Puritans traveled to America on ships owned by the East India Company, which had already established the first colony in North America, at Jamestown, in the Company-owned Commonwealth of Virginia, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi. The commonwealth was named after the "Virgin Queen," Elizabeth, who had chartered the corporation.
Elizabeth was trying to make England a player in the new global trade sparked by the European "discovery" of the Americas. The wealth Spain began extracting from the New World caught the attention of the European powers. In many European countries, particularly Holland and France, consortiums were put together to finance ships to sail the seas. In 1580, Queen Elizabeth became the largest shareholder in The Golden Hind, a ship owned by Sir Francis Drake.
The investment worked out well for Queen Elizabeth. There's no record of exactly how much she made when Drake paid her share of the Hind's dividends to her, but it was undoubtedly vast, since Drake himself and the other minor shareholders all received a 5000 percent return on their investment. Plus, because the queen placed a maximum loss to the initial investors of their investment amount only, it was a low-risk investment (for the investors at least-creditors, such as suppliers of provisions for the voyages or wood for the ships, or employees, for example, would be left unpaid if the venture failed, just as in a modern-day corporation). She was endorsing an investment model that led to the modern limited-liability corporation.
After making a fortune on Drake's expeditions, Elizabeth started looking for a more permanent arrangement. She authorized a group of 218 London merchants and noblemen to form a corporation. The East India Company was born on December 31, 1600.
By the 1760s, the East India Company's power had grown massive and worldwide. However, this rapid expansion, trying to keep ahead of the Dutch trading companies, was a mixed blessing, as the company went deep in debt to support its growth, and by 1770 found itself nearly bankrupt.
The company turned to a strategy that multinational corporations follow to this day: They lobbied for laws that would make it easy for them to put their small-business competitors out of business.
Most of the members of the British government and royalty (including the king) were stockholders in the East India Company, so it was easy to get laws passed in its interests. Among the Company's biggest and most vexing problems were American colonial entrepreneurs, who ran their own small ships to bring tea and other goods directly into America without routing them through Britain or through the Company. Between 1681 and 1773, a series of laws were passed granting the Company monopoly on tea sold in the American colonies and exempting it from tea taxes. Thus, the Company was able to lower its tea prices to undercut the prices of the local importers and the small tea houses in every town in America. But the colonists were unappreciative of their colonies being used as a profit center for the multinational corporation.
Boston's million-dollar tea party
And so, Hewes says, on a cold November evening of 1773, the first of the East India Company's ships of tax-free tea arrived. The next morning, a pamphlet was widely circulated calling on patriots to meet at Faneuil Hall to discuss resistance to the East India Company and its tea. "Things thus appeared to be hastening to a disastrous issue. The people of the country arrived in great numbers, the inhabitants of the town assembled. This assembly, on the 16th of December 1773, was the most numerous ever known, there being more than 2000 from the country present," said Hewes.
The group called for a vote on whether to oppose the landing of the tea. The vote was unanimously affirmative, and it is related by one historian of that scene "that a person disguised after the manner of the Indians, who was in the gallery, shouted at this juncture, the cry of war; and that the meeting dissolved in the twinkling of an eye, and the multitude rushed in a mass to Griffin's wharf."
That night, Hewes dressed as an Indian, blackening his face with coal dust, and joined crowds of other men in hacking apart the chests of tea and throwing them into the harbor. In all, the 342 chests of tea-over 90,000 pounds-thrown overboard that night were enough to make 24 million cups of tea and were valued by the East India Company at 9,659 Pounds Sterling or, in today's currency, just over $1 million.
In response, the British Parliament immediately passed the Boston Port Act stating that the port of Boston would be closed until the citizens of Boston reimbursed the East India Company for the tea they had destroyed. The colonists refused. A year and a half later, the colonists would again state their defiance of the East India Company and Great Britain by taking on British troops in an armed conflict at Lexington and Concord (the "shots heard 'round the world") on April 19, 1775.
That war-finally triggered by a transnational corporation and its government patrons trying to deny American colonists a fair and competitive local marketplace-would end with independence for the colonies.
The revolutionaries had put the East India Company in its place with the Boston Tea Party, and that, they thought, was the end of that. Unfortunately, the Boston Tea Party was not the end; within 150 years, during the so-called Gilded Age, powerful rail, steel, and oil interests would rise up to begin a new form of oligarchy, capturing the newly-formed Republican Party in the 1880s, and have been working to establish a permanent wealthy and ruling class in this country ever since.
99 Comments so far
Show AllWhy does American history not teach this story to school children and young adults? Why do I have to wait to be a middle-aged adult to read about this in Thom's article? What other true history of this nation have I been robbed?
The tyranny of the East India Company and it's backing by the British government is now replicated with big oil and it's backing by our government. The most profitable, biggest and most powerful and influential business enterprise in history has bought our democratic process, involved us in wars that have no other real purpose but oil, manipulated energy markets at the expense of our citizens, ruined our economy and sought to fool the public and Congress regarding climate change and our energy future.
We just had 8 years of an administration staffed almost entirely by oil company people, from Bush, Chenny, Condie Rice on down. They even made sure that important positions in government agencies invested with responsibility for the environment were oil people. ( Reagan was the first to use this vile tactic. ) They put the fox in charge of the hen house at every oppurtunity. In the end, Bush used his last days in office making every last ditch anti environmental/pro fossil fuel policy that he could.
The strangle hold that Standard Oil had on American politics and trade over a hundred years ago was partially vanquished by anti trust laws and the breakup of Standard Oil. It's back in spades. Reagan opened the door by weakening anti trust laws. Mega mergers of big oil companies have brought them into a position of power and influence that is unprecented. And this time, it's a matter of life and death, our future verses their short term interests.
What's truly mind boggling is how conservatives defend this travesty and subversion of our democracy, in the name of the "free market".
This is what a real modern day Boston Tea Party would be protesting against.
Read:
"The Tyranny of Oil" by Antonia Juhasz
"The Carbon Age" by Eric Roston
"The Heat is On" and "Boiling Point"
by Ross Gelbspan
Hell, yeah, Thom! This is the truth that the public needs to know.
Ok, Evelyna, I'm having a hard time following the logic here. You don't want any of the working people getting any benefits you don't. If you don't get it -- pension, health care, education, whatever -- you damn well don't want to see taxes paying for some other working stiff to get it. Let's go after those nine to fivers who look like they might be getting a better deal! BUT YOU HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH MULTIMILLIONAIRES TAKING YOUR TAX DOLLARS FOR PERFORMANCE MEGA-BONUSES ON FAILING COMPANIES??? (The same ones that trashed your 401K.) Beam me up, Scottie, there are no signs of intelligent life!
A lot of you are misinformed about the tea parties. Most of the people are independents-not dimo or wepucks.
Obama may be throwing the working people a bone or 2 of an extra ten dollars in their petty pay-but the states and municiples, cities, counties, townships are taxing people a lot-while at the same time providing fewer services.
Let me see-Why do I want to continue working to support illegals who are not told by our government they cannot come here and reproduce? Shouldn't we be able to take care of the people here before my taxes provide for others?
Why shouldn't everyone have to pay for their health care?
Why do I owe the county and state workers a pension. I lost money in my 401lk and the county and state are not bailing me out?
People are angry at having to pay for things that do not benefit them-while at the same time being told by our elected officals they do not deserve the things the educated do.
It is easier to sit in school then it is to work.
Where in the constitution does it say I am suppose to provide for people who cannot care for themselves or the educated afflunet who can afford to take care of themselves.
Many americans think the unions are not deserving of the pay they make or their health benefits.
If it is o.k for the people who have worked for unions for 30 years to be told they do not deserve anything-why do the teachers and others who work for the state and county deserve to be supported by me? I have no kids and do not benefit from this.
In the mean spirited world you envision everyone is miserable, no one helps out anyone else, and the gap between the haves and have nots becomes ever larger.
Well, if the haves have enough they can live behind the walls of their communities, with the backdoor looking out onto a golf course. And as they sip their third cocktail for the evening watching the sun set they don't have to care about what's going on beyond those walls.
But the rest of us have to deal with climbing illiteracy, huge public health issues, the loss of basic services, more pot holes on the street, rising crime rates, inflation and the stink of poverty.
If we want to be a banana republic we certainly can be. With eighty percent living in or on the edge of poverty and five percent benefitting from the best golf courses the world can provide. The far right sneers upon "bleeding heart liberals.? What? Does that mean their own lives are so narrow and small that they can not understand how helping those in need actually makes the world a better place for all of us? Is Obama, for example, working to make higher education more available to more people only because he is a "tax and spend bleeding heart?" Because he's weak, effete, pointy headed, and there's something basically wrong with his genes?
No. He's doing it for the betterment of all. To make this a better country to live in. Government provides what the private sector has no interest in providing for a lack of profit. It’s as simple and practical as that. And, oh yes, it doesn’t hurt to be kind to our neighbors, too.
I would respectfully suggest that your piece is pure propaganda, and taken almost word for word from the Republican Party playbook. The demonstrations were hosted by Fox News commentators, put together by republican activists, and those who participate in them, as well as believe your right wing unAmerican platform, are far from good citizens.
Rather than make a point by point refutation of your abysmal platform above I would note that you wont be back in all likelihood as you are without doubt hopping from site to site, like Peter Cottontail, spreading manure on facts in order to reinforce lies....Nice job,NOT!
What I think is happening here is that these rightwing extremists see their Bush years ascendancy slipping away. And they, of course, don’t like it. Not at all.
So they are reacting fanatically, like children throwing a tantrum. To many of us such notions as “life begins at conception” are mere expressions of religious belief and fanaticism. That is, attempting to force these beliefs on all the rest of us. The slip and slide of the right in order to discover new rationalizations for their ideas, rather than following the evidence wherever it coldly leads, by now has become long familiar to nearly all Americans. But they, the right, do not like a rationalist, such as Obama, occupying the White House at all. And they are watching all their milk and cookies on the child’s half table being swept away and dumped into the garbage.
Which is why they are throwing their tantrums.
This is all pretty childish. But what did they offer to begin with? Look at the long standing irrationality of their fanatical beliefs. Of course they search for more pointed pejoratives, sharper pointed slanders than the dull epithet of “liberal” and stab today with the “fascism” and “socialism” smears. These, they hope, will have a stronger effect, and rally more people to their side. People like them, I suppose, who base their thought on fantasies, visions of hobgoblins in the night. Children throwing a tantrum fit.
These rightwingers have nothing left but stamping their feet. And hoping Obama fails. And, of course, their constitutional recourse to noise.
Unfortunately they have a bit more than that. They have an ability to phrase policy in negative terms that appeal to the blue collar workers who are really better served opposing the right wing. They also have the media to reinforce whatever nonsense they spout until it becomes as truth.
Yes, they have a great deal of money, corporate power, and persistence.
That persistence helped them endure many a legislative defeat. Even when they're set back year after year they keep returning. And often enough they eventually receive what they want.
We lived through eight giddy years under George Bush and the fresh open air is strangling them now. Will this current mega mess serve as a lesson? Yes. But for how long?
Obama's decision yesterday not to go after torturers in the CIA on the basis of "looking forward" - about as cynical a comment as can come from a Constitutional scholar - and his indications of willingness to reestablish our banking system on the old foundations are not hopeful signs. Though on the latter, I think, we won't really know until we see what kind of reregulation will eventually be established.
Grover Norquist hoped government would be shrunk to fit into a bathtub and would go down the drain. The giddy right instead is going down the drain in a fierce spin. But that doesn't mean our woes are over. Human nature hasn't changed.
He's right that the Boston Tea Party was not about the tax on tea, but not about what it was.
The gentlemen who tossed the tea into the harbor were smugglers. They were protesting a REDUCTION in the tax on tea by the colonial authorities, thus making smuggling redundant and their livelihoods with it.
Rainborowe
This seems like good history. However, the last paragraph glosses over a hundred plus years of politics as though it were a day. There once was a party called the Democratic-Republican party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic-Republican_Party_(United_States)) which was founded by two of our Constitution's authors. Their views, however, are not held by either branch of the ruling oligarchy we mistakenly call the Democrats and the Republicans. Both of these branches now want supreme federal government authority. They don't believe in true liberalism (letting people decide what's best for themselves); they believe in statism (letting the government decide what's best). I think we all need to get back to classic liberalism. We would all have more freedom, privacy and, maybe, money.
I agree with the author's main point. The BTP was a corporate revolt. However, since our government continues to act like it's a big boss, telling all it's employees (the US citizens) how the company called the US economy is going to be run (and it's already been doing this for at least the past 20 years), I don't see any reason why the employees of this company shouldn't go on strike. No matter how much the author tries to tie the tea parties to big business, the fact is that they are grassroots assemblies (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123975867505519363.html). FYI, they even thumbed their noses at Michael Steele's request to come speak at their rally in Chicago. It's on. It's time for a third party to emerge.
Thank you, Mr. Hartmann, for making this important point. I would also point out that if anything like the REAL Boston Tea Party happened in America today, the perpetrators would certainly be charged with terrorism, with all the unconstitutional implications that charge brings with it.
We are not free in this country, because we are completely dependent on corporations for everything we need to live, and because those same corporations have hugely disproportionate power in our federal government. And those corporations enjoy their position of control because the "two-party" corporate-owned system precludes the possibility of real change. We are still in Iraq and will be there indefinitely; we are still in Afghanistan and will be there indefinitely; we are still saber-rattling at Iran and may decide any day now that they're "too dangerous" for us NOT to attack; and the Obama DOJ is fighting to keep detainees from having the right to have charges leveled against them, or be released. What change? Well, I guess it's all the change one can reasonably expect from the Democratic wing of the Military-Industrial Complex Party.
just say it was a tax revolt against big business or just say against classic British capitalism as Adam Smith defined and defended it in saying the 13 colonies should pay for their protection provided by Great Britain, the mother country and such capitalism would always seek new markets if those within its state boundaries weren't sufficient, as they weren't.
The gilded age would start a little after Abraham Lincoln's death, and the Wall Street crowd would hijack the Republicans right then just after Lincoln's death to carry out their plunder of the country and stay on that course except when Dwight Eisenhower would reach the White House for eight years. Ike was the only real break with this pattern, with Gerald Ford making a lesser attempt at same.
AD
The Fox gang tell us what to talk about and that is all we hear , see , and read in the media for days . If we ever wonder why we vote against our own benifits here is an example . If we do not establish a single payer health care system , costs will be beyond 100% of what those people that were out there looking for something to complain could to pay for . BUT THE FOX GANG WILL NOT LET US TALK ABOUT HEALTH CARE . THE PUPPET MASTER HAS OTHER MORE IMPORTANT THINGS FOR US TO TALK ABOUT .
We'll see if it comes through as planned but no one should underestimate the power of this movement. People are furious over bailouts et. al. and Obama is either ignorant or totally corporatist. Right Wing talk radio can easily harness this fury. Yes it's irritating that these folks didn't complain about Bush but the fact is, this is bad policy from the Obama Administration and when the real financial you know what hits the fan in a year or two people are not going to care about truth.
A modern tea party fed to us by the corps by the perps that brought us to ruin and are blaming us for our own misery. I get it. Gee for a moment there I thought someone might actually be on our side in this crazy mess but the Republican party needs to see my portfolio that shows I make over 50 million a year. I only wish I made enough to buy food. So a tea party to lower taxes on the richest? Ok I say we do them a favor and raise taxes on the richest to Ronnie's time at around 50%. They love this myth so much let's see them explicate out of this one. Ronnie and Georgie and the stupid one raised our national debt to over 80% of the total and I don't hear the bobble heads in congress(Republicans) swearing about that one. Let's see America inherited a super mess and we are the cause of it all. My address is not Wall Street and it isn't Chase Bank or any other bank or holding company. But it is my fault and yours too and if you don't believe it just ask them. Tea Party? I'll give them a tea party. Come on down.
I wish some of these people would blacken their faces with coal dust. Because I don't see too many blacks attending this "party".
So, how do you judge the color of a poster?
What an idiot!
The expression of racism is independent of one's race, despite anything Spike Lee would say.
"What an idiot!"
Right back at you.
I realise that you do not care for me, the feeling is certainly mutual. I also realise you are a phony. Why not resist the urge to post crap and just ignore me.
The jerk posted about a lack of black posters and the obvious question remains.
Run out of preparation H?
"I realise that you do not care for me, "
We are discussing your political ideas, and sometimes your tactics. That's not "you".
You just demonstrated your inability to see yourself. I was unaware this exchange was limited to MY posts and MY actions. Typical of libertarians, scratch the surface and one finds an incredible self centeredness and incomprehensible selfish attitude.
I mostly try to separate the poster from the post,as you claim so self righteously to do, but sometimes, in a few cases, it isnt possible.
"I was unaware this exchange was limited to MY posts and MY actions."
I was addressing your evident concern that I "don't care for" you.
"I mostly try to separate the poster from the post,as you claim so self righteously to do, but sometimes, in a few cases, it isnt possible."
Of course it's "possible" Rick, all you have to do is confine your comments to the argument being made, and stop calling people names. In this case, as with many others I have seen with you, the problem is that you have still ignored the arguments. IOW, use a little self discipline.
'Projection' is the psychological term you are in need of pondering.
Rick: *You* have commited ad homs against me and called me names. I have done neither of these towards you. You'll get it eventually.
I already have it, sorry for you. You are one of those incapable of seeing your own mean spiritedness and curmudgeonly actions directed at those who dare to disagree with your incredibly selfish world view. Not at all atypical ,just sad.
"the obvious question remains."
The answer is pretty simple: Blacks make up only a small amount of the electorate as a whole,
And 95% of them voted for Obama. Maybe *that* is racist.
Unless comparable percentages of blacks voted for Kerry, Gore, and Clinton.
88% for Kerry. (CNN)
90% for Gore. (UPI)
83% and 84% for Clinton. (Wikipedia)
You could likely account for the larger percentage for Obama due to first-time black voters excited to vote for a black candidate for once. But it seems blacks simply vote for the Democrat candidate, black or not, in what could be considered nearly unanimous numbers.
"You could likely account for the larger percentage for Obama due to first-time black voters excited to vote for a black candidate for once."
I think this was the case in fact.
"But it seems blacks simply vote for the Democrat candidate, black or not, in what could be considered nearly unanimous numbers."
Yes, Democrats can count on this sort of number from the black vote year after year, even at the municipal level in cities where there doesn't appear to be much improvement for that bloc.
The first one to bring up race is always The Racist.
There must be a lack of education and common sense going around.
Naturally, with the two biggest recent advancements in education being holding everyone to some artificial standard and trying to force a masquerade of religious theory onto everyone in school.
I kind of like Tom Hartmann sometimes, but his infatuation with the despicable, slave owning and promoting, landed male suffragists who drafted the Constitution that protected property and balanced liberties at best is seriously disingenuous, bordering on dishonest. The Boston Tea Party wasn't "anti-corporatist". It was a battle by one group of gentry and aristocrats who wanted to to own the land other landed gentry owned in which they set up a backwards Constitutional system denying non-landed men the right to vote, denying women the vote for over a Century, permitting slavery until a Civil War ended it and served as the basis for Manifest Destiny in which they granted themselves the right to slaughter the indigenous population. It also served as the basis for Manifest Destiny's Americas international policy -- the Monroe Doctrine -- a policy justifying greedy, corporate gunboat diplomacy.
nonamnesiac,
Don't you think it is rather unfair to judge the founders by modern politically correct standards of today? One of the original drafts of the Declaration of Independence accused the king of gross barbarism in his use of slave labor and decreed it outlawed, but the Southern states with their huge slave plantations would have none of it; so it was removed.
Most of the constitution, especially the Bill of Rights was very Earth shattering for it's day. Ben Franklin remarked a few years later just how well it had all worked out: he noted how all classes of the people were content, as anyone could homestead and be a land holder. The thirteen states were prosperous, and the bounty of the land was enjoyed by all.
Most indigenous "hunter-gatherer" cultures on most continents that I am aware of got displaced by agricultural Homo sapiens since way too much land is needed for that kind of tribal, seasonal migratory lifestyle.
Displacement was just as inevitable as our coming extinction is. You can't overpopulate forever without global consequence.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Now, I am no apologist for the history of looting, pillaging, and death sponsored by the U.S.A. However, the U.S. Constitution (& declaration of independence) WAS a forward thinking document for its time, provided a blueprint for many other countries, and it did provide the framework for progress in civil liberties over the years.
nonamnesiac --- dead on. I call them kiddie raping, slave holding, patrician, richfilth animals. The revolution started in 1763 when the Crown cut a deal with the French (French & Indian War) that said the British colonial slaveholders would not expand their slave plantations beyond the Appalachians. THAT started everything. These same kiddie raping, slave holding, patrician, richfilth animals thought they could cut a better deal for themselves without a King. Their alternative was the Roman Slave Republic before Sulla when same kiddie raping, slave holding, richfilth patrician clans ruled the Roman Empire with impunity. That's what they wanted, that's what they wrote into the Constitution and they have owned the government and the courts ever since.
The single exception was the Roosevelt Legacy which was only born after the aborted Business Coup of 1935 by Prescott Bush and his richfilth animal cronies. That Legacy was first defeated by the reactionary white majority here in 1968. When 49 states overwhelming voted RMN into office the force that put him there was embodied in a line I heard spoken by Blue Collar and White Collar America from New York to Lost Angels in '68, "....put those fucking niggers, those filthy fucking cunts, and those god damned long haired commie fucking antiwar protesters in their fucking place." White America voted for Exclusion. They refused to reject white male supremacy, gender slavery, and constant war. So, Nixon called Hoover and Hoover; graduate of the Palmer Raids and Anslinger's protege, ran COINTELPRO (ritual defamation, false imprisonment, and extra judicial execution) which were all programs he'd developed since 1924. He just put them on steroids. In a decade, there were no leaders and no mass movements for economic and social justice. GWB, the grandson of the double traitor Prescott Bush (he also laundered money for the Nazi's during WWII until Roosevelt's DOJ shut him down) - his grandson delivered the final coup de grace and fully restored the kiddie raping, slave holding, patrician, richfilth animals to final primacy in the Empire. These parasites will be the death of the country and most of the people.
Mr. Hartmann simply wants to make his progressive point and I can't blame him for that. He loves to quote a man who raped a 14yo daily in between composing verses for the Declaration. He later dressed the 'products' of his rape in livery and had them serve meals to him and his white family. That psychosis runs to the heart of American identity. He later wrote to his good friend John Adams (Alien and Sedition Acts) that he hoped there was NOT a just God.
Now, I have no truck with genocidal flat earth blood gods from the ME but I do take their point. Luckily for them, there isn't, but there are, nonetheless, consequences. People die. Lots and lots and lots of people die. THAT's what comes from the White American psychosis. It is a disease called Exclusion and Privilege.
Of course 40 years down the road, the white majority is now in THEIR place. They forgot, the single indivisible absolute TRUTH of kiddie raping richfilth animals back to the Sumerians: Master doesn't share. He wants EVERYTHING, FOREVER, for HIMSELF. You wonder they make wars all the time and degrade every human they touch?
Side note: As a direct and intentional result of the Roosevelt Taxation Policy, by 1964 the richfilth Oligarchy of America was nearly moribund. Like that old movie said, "...THEEEEY'RE BAAAAACK!!!"
Peace.
Great post Lucky, you rock.
But now I'm thinking about changing my screen name (and I didn't even get banned this time!)
It is a great irony that the chief opponent of slavery had such seedy relationships with his own slaves. But I understand that mixed off-spring were quite common in the Colonial plantation South..... In his defense, I understand he treated his slaves quite well, they did not run away.
It's my contention that we may be judging these men of freedom too harshly by standards that did not exist back then. For example, I was told that 14yo sex is still legal certain places in the Caribbean even today. I understand that Thomas Edison married a 16yo bride. Statutory age laws must not have been in existence in the colonies? Or else the governor or a Captain of Industry just doesn't have to obey them?
It's clear Murder for profit is not illegal if you are the president. Even today.
pacplyer
awolbushape
byemonkeybush
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
You should call into Michael Savage's show and debate him, I bet you'd kick his ass.
But that would be sort of like twins debating....
Every once in a while even corporate adventures can go awry such as the famous "South Sea Bubble" on which the famous physicist Newton is reported to have lost 80,000 pounds.
I'll Google "South Sea Bubble" when I get a chance, but I assure you that it is not as "famous" as you think.
Is it true that when Newton was advised of his loss, he merely declared that he didn't give a fig?
· Yr Obd't Servant
Ouch! You are a very,very bad man.....Seinfeld reference.
The South Sea Company was a British joint stock company that traded in South America during the 18th century. Founded in 1711, the company was granted a monopoly to trade in Spain's South American colonies as part of a treaty during the War of Spanish Succession. In return, the company assumed the national debt England had incurred during the war. Speculation in the company's stock led to a great economic bubble known as the South Sea Bubble in 1720, which caused financial ruin for many. In spite of this it was restructured and continued to operate for more than a century after the Bubble.
WTF is that supposed to mean?
Thom Hartmann is at his best when he uses historical reference, and his command of history is usually spot on. He is especially apt at citing Madison.
I agree Rick.
What an article huh? We should all copy it and distribute it everywhere for our citizen's education.
I believe I'll start buying his books.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Tom Jeff, I recommend you start with Hartmann's "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights", and "What Would Jefferson Do?" Both deal with the core problem plaguing our country today: Corporate Personhood
Most, if not all, of the dilemmas we suffer through today are only the symptoms; corporate personhood is the disease.
Peace and understanding...
end.corporate.personhood
Excellent article. I would suggest though that no one make the mistake that this is just Right Wing Corporate funded demonstrations. There is some of that. There are also a lot of people that are quite unhappy with the course plotted by the present administration. How many folks agtually show up will be a real measure.
These folks are not take to the street types. but don't underestimate them for a minute.
Re: "There are also a lot of people that are quite unhappy with the course plotted by the present administration".
I will believe this when you can demonstrate just how many of the sham protesters were out marching when Goerge Bush/Dick Cheney lied this country into the invasion and destruction of Iraq and the deaths and displacement of millions of Iraqi citizens. Also, show me where these good people protested the deaths of American soldiers during the Bush/Cheney Folly.
And please include their protests when Bush/Cheney and the republicans were trying to destroy the United States Constitution, spying, torturing, using the Justice Department for political intimidation, outing a CIA operative, pillaging the treasury by dumping billions of tax dollars of no-bid contracts into the pockets of rich republicans.
The only reason these good citizens have joined the Freedom Works/Fox Noise/Republican/Reich-wingers in protesting is because the President of these United States is A BLACK man.
There is very little evidence that these protesters even understand just what they are protesting, especially since NONE of them make over $250,000 a year. I'm willing to bet that not many of these protesters include those who are unemployed because their previous job is now performed by someone in India? Not many are those who don't have any medical insurance? Or are about to lose their homes?
I am sure that there are oodles and oodles and oodles of links to data that show where these tea baggers did not just suddenly develop the need to protest.
My goodness be careful! I wouldnt want to see you hurt yourself stretching to make a stupid point like this.
I seem to recall millions in the streets prior to the invasion of Iraq, wasnt a white man in the oval office then? The reason, or a reason, that many are so angry now is more because they feel betrayed by our new president, lied to and cheated out of their vote.
You know, the way you were cheated out of an intellect.
I don't demonstrate anything to racists.
"The only reason these good citizens have joined the Freedom Works/Fox Noise/Republican/Reich-wingers in protesting is because the President of these United States is A BLACK man."
Shame on you.
His post in no way makes him a racist, he was just implying the real motivation for all the protesters was racist, which is of course false when applied to all, but I am sure there is a substantial amount of these protesters that are racist. And all his other points seem to be perfectly true.
Agreed. I'm not quite sure how Thomas Moore misinterpreted Sammy W's comment, either.
Mr. Moore, would you care to elaborate?
Peace...
end.corporate.personhood
perhaps TM is implying that SW is being racist for badmouthing others who may be???
gotta watch out - mustn't offend anyone . . .
By the way, British East India Company enslaved Indians to grow opium that it used to addict the Chinese for high profit. When the Chinese government drew the line, the British declared war to protect their pusher of this gargantuan mass addiction, the British East India Company.
The question is how many USans are ready to stand up to the modern day corpo-godzillas? Last I heard they were trying to keep GM alive to save the auto workers jobs.
"British East India Company enslaved Indians to grow opium that it used to addict the Chinese for high profit. When the Chinese government drew the line, the British declared war to protect their pusher of this gargantuan mass addiction, the British East India Company."
US schoolchildren are never taught the shocking details of the Opium Wars, or of other abominable British imperial actions. The British Empire through its history and its royalty, now obsolete, are mostly presented as champions of civilized values, and its East India Company as a model of enterprise and resourcefulness.
Since when did Obama take a stance against corporations? Apparently, Hartmann has not heard of TARP funding, Guethnier or Summers: who happen to work for Obama.
Seems to me Obama is headed straight for Corporatism in Government anyway.
A breakdown of bailout recipients:
http://bailout.propublica.org/main/list/index
If you do business with them, then stop doing business with them.
Your vote is your dollar. Your dollar is their blood. Stop the flow.
This article if read by everyone would easily teach people that the anxiety of uncertainty that people are experiencing today is not new, not by accident, is caused by corporations with the help of our government and is not more America bashing from the left.
A simple thing we could all do is write a brief letter to the editor about this first hand account of the Boston Tea Party and then end with the web address for this article. It will be a lot more educational than the astroturf tea party being financed by modern day American royalty.
Since when have corporations put the truth over their bottom line?
Thanks for the lesson.
can anyone tell me why the colonials felt they needed to dress up like natives???
it's bugged me since grade school!
According to James W. Loewen ("Lies My Teacher Told Me"):
"For a hundred years after our Revolution, Americans credited Native Americans as a source of their democratic institutions. Revolutionary-era cartoonists used images of Indians to represent the colonies against Britain. Virginia's patriot rifle companies wore Indian clothes and moccasins as they fought the redcoats. When colonists took action to oppose unjust authority, as in the Boston Tea Party or the anti-rent protests against Dutch plantations in the Hudson River valley during the 1840s, they chose to dress as Indians, not to blame Indians for the demonstrations but to appropriate a symbol identified with liberty."
My guess would be that Indians would be expected to demonstrate such "wild behavior." It is interesting to note that the "Sons of Liberty" evolved into the "International Order of Red Men."
"International Order of Red Men."
"International" as in the "World" Series, or the "World" Trade Center?
my guess would be that these guys changed their name again during the "Red Under the Bed" years.
(so why are Republicans considered "red" when this is internationally the colour associated with the labour movement)
To disguise themselves, so the authorities wouldn't recognize and arrest them afterward.
I'll rephrase the question: why as natives?
Estimates put the number of men who dumped those 332 chests of tea as between 30-130 strong, only a very few of whom were "thinly disguised" as indians.
They remain some of my favorite activists.
perhaps they were of Scottish descent and had daubed themselves with woad.
I paid too much attention to WW2 history and not enough to everything else when I was younger haha.
No idea. Maybe there's a journal of one of the participants somewhere explaining?
Just thought I'd share this...we're having a really fun day at MMFA today. Rush Limbaugh discovered on-air today what teabagging was, and read it from a dictionary. It was damned hilarious!
The term "Teabagging" was earlier applied to the protests by Rachel Maddow at MSNBC among others. She never indicated who among the protesters was using the term so I assume she went with it herself. Rush was specifically responding to that. And Rush didn't "just discover" it either Einstein. I watched Rachel's show Monday I thought it juvenile, she and Ana Marie Cox going on like adolecent boys might. Tuesday, she just did it again as though she just couldn't get enough. I thought you had to be out of junior high school to host a TV show. She's horrible. I'll keep watching a bit more to see if she ever has a guest with a view opposed to hers. *shrug*
She cited emails and websites calling on people to "teabag the White House" and Congress, as well as some news shot host calling for it to, but I have no idea who it was. And uh, she reportedly does several hours of research daily before her show airs, and I imagine she's far more intelligent than anyone on Fox News Channel.
"She cited emails and websites calling on people to "teabag the White House" and Congress, as well as some news shot host calling for it to, but I have no idea who it was."
Can you imagine that there are people from that side of things who don't know the alternate meaning of the verb "teabag"?
"she reportedly does several hours of research daily before her show airs,"
So with hours of research ahead of the show, why would she and her guest make *dozens upon dozens* of references to oral sex specifically, over several different airings? Blobbermann is doing the same thing now as I post. He said "well, *they* are the ones who chose a teabag as their symbol". Obviously, that is the noun form of the word Blobbermann. Utterly vapid.
For fun. If comedy was not an accepted way to air news and opinion, The Daily show and Colbert Report would likely not have the popularity it does.
I agree, but Comedy Central has decent writers that change the joke. They could have rerun Rachel's Monday show on Tuesday and Wednesday and given her those days off to do research or something.
I enjoyed her segment, it was refreshing. Unfortunately though I rarely get to watch her show, I'm usually busy with housework while it's on. Bleh.
Edit: And sure enough, Jon Stewart is covering them :-)
"I enjoyed her segment, it was refreshing. "
To each their own. I can understand finding oral sex jokes funny, but three nights in a row? I'll bet anything she continues the immaturity tonight.
I guess left wing commentary is not Mr. Newton's thing. But then I never before knew that libertarians had no sense of humor, the things one learns!
Untrue. Stewart and Colbert and Trudaeu are actually funny. Maddow and Olbermann are "unfunny", and completely redundant. Harry Shearer, unfunny.
Thanks for your enlightened post. :-P
You are more than welcome, any time I can insert humor into curmudgeonry....
"any time I can insert humor"
Where exactly did you do that now? You funny guy!
"Rachel Maddow"
She is just not very good.
Predictably, as I post, she is continuing with the childishness on tonight's show along with Ana Marie.
Excellent article, Thom. Thank you for your work and research. And a salute to George Hewes, a hero of the Revolution. Who will be a hero of the next Revolution? For we must have one. We are in the grip of today's version of the East India Tea Company.
"Although schoolchildren are usually taught that the American Revolution was a rebellion against 'taxation without representation,' akin to modern day conservative taxpayer revolts, in fact what led to the revolution was rage against a transnational corporation...".
We aren't teaching our children anything, just brainwashing them to be obedient workers and compliant cannon fodder. I keep remembering Horace Greeley's response when asked if we should have public education: "By all means teach them to read. Then we can tell them what to think." It worked. The last thing the Masters of the Universe want is for people to become informed critical thinkers. Much more useful to be worms that jerk when poked. So Americans, get off your bellies and on your feet! Under dire circumstances Americans have reached deep for their power. So do it again!
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Well put Mr. Hartmann. Today's "tea party" is completely unreal, funded by corporate lobbyist courtesy of the bailout funds from our taxdollars, and just another dumbshow. At least the one in the colonial times had a real purpose and was dynamic unlike today's fixed one.
They should read "The Spirit Level" and start by taking in Johann Hari's excellent account of it on this site. A very different approach to the problem, and one that actually works in societies today.
The Republican party should now officially change its name to "The T-Bangers", for they are now, and have been for the past 30+ years, nothing more than a street gang of thugs heavily tattooed with dollar signs and skulls.
From the article:
"...schoolchildren are usually taught that the American Revolution was a rebellion against "taxation without representation..."
May the next one be against representation without taxation.
!
"May the next one be against representation without taxation."
Well said.
This is the crux of the matter.
The government no longer represents the people.
Lock up all the lobbyists until they learn a proper trade.
And even then they should not be allowed out without proper supervision.
The Repubs tried to harness the "militia" movement back in the 1990s, but dropped them like a hot potato after the Oklahoma City atrocity (which the militias were not really involved with). I hope the "Tea-Party" movement tells the Repubs to go to the Devil; if they allow themselves to be co-opted by the Repubs, they'll just be betrayed in the end, the same way gun owners have always been betrayed by the GOP, no matter how they vote for them or fork over campaign contributions.
Personally, I despise both of the big parties, as part of the problem and not the solution. A plague on both their houses!
Right On! - - (Whoops, N0 RIGHT, Thank you) Excellent point, just keep it up!!
The neocons own the media and that allows them to redefine words like fascist, revise historical events like the Boston tea party, and create new words that make no sense like islamofascist.
Neocons have become expert revisionists during the past thirty years.
The original Tea Party still strikes me as anti-government because the monopoly of the East India Company was granted and backed by the force of the British Government. No government, no monopoly.
Modern day Tea Party participants are just as likely to take this position against the welfare/warfare state.
By Hartmann's own admission, the action in Boston hundreds of years ago was in favor of free markets. The actions yesterday were not that ideologically different -- just look at all the signs from the blogs covering it in detail (not one or two pics, either, try at least a few dozen, especially if you weren't there.)
As the movement grows, I think the protesters will continue to encompass more of the 90% of Americans opposed to TARP last fall, which both major parties rammed down the throats of the people. These are not neo-con/neo-lib apologists participating. These are people waking up to the disaster of the unsustainable Federal Reserve System and global fiat empire.
04.25.09
http://EndTheFed.us
I got the opposite message from this article. What it said to me was that the original Tea Party was anti-free market. The people who participated wanted protectionism. I also didn't get a sense that they were against government in general. The story debunks a lot of libertarian claims about US history. Did Thom say something on-air that contradicted this?
The actions of the crown on behalf of the East India Company were about as far from free market economics as one can get. You should read up on this. When a govt puts tariffs and restrictions upon competitors but allows a single company a virtual monopoly and free ride one should not conflate that with any sort of free market policies.