IT is amazing how people can say things that seem to them true but are simply false. What is even stranger is that few care if it is true at all. The Tea Party and its self-appointed representatives refer to the events of 1776 as their point of departure as a movement today. The "Join the Tea Party" ( https://www.jointheteaparty.us/... simply identifies itself as being opposed to "liberal insanity" and especially George Soros. Another group, Tea Party Patriots claim they are following the Founders of the American Revolution by pressing their core values on other Americas. These core values of (http://www.teapartypatriots.org/mission.aspx) are : fiscal responsibility, limited government and free markets. The The Tea Party Nation, they have limited their core values to a pick and chose approach to the Founders' ideals as: " Tea Party Nation is a user-driven
group of like-minded people who desire our God-given individual
freedoms written out by the Founding Fathers. We believe in Limited
Government, Free Speech, the 2nd Amendment, our Military, Secure
Borders and our Country."
Since new groups of self-appointed Tea Party purists appear every day, some denouncing all the others or just a few, the general phobia appears to be an anti-tax mentality. Which surrounds a mistaken idea of the original Tea Party of 1776. the summary article at Wiki for an outline and timeline (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_party_(tax_protest)). It may come as a surprise to Tea Party people but the Boston Tea Party was not about taxation, but it was about monopoly. The protest organized by Sam Adams, Hancock, Warren and Revere, was meant to counter the act of Parliament of May 10 1773 that permitted the East India Company to export tea to the colonies with the assurance of a monopoly on the retail sale. The effect was not to produce taxes, but profits for the Company at the expense of American storeowners, while the cost of the tea would be substantially lower than tat which American consumers had before had to pay. Background on this can be found in Henry Steele Commager & Richard B. Morris' The Spirit of 'Seventy-Six: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by Participants, v. 1, Bobbs-Merrill, N.Y,m 1958.
Tea Party a Shill for Corporate Power, But Use of Religion Dangerous
The origin of the Tea Party is in corporate initiative, but the means to that end is based partly on radical Christianity http://www.dailykos.com/... The libertarian facade is the thinest of props (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/9/2/886221/-Hayek,-Ron-and-Rand-Paul-and-the-Libertarians). The Tea Party is the creature of corporate control of the media http://www.dailykos.com/... Much like Berlusconi has gained control of Italian media and then the government in Italy.
I think people of all political persuasions should form tea parties and target monopoly as the original patriots did. I envision liberal tea parties, socialist tea parties, anarchist tea parties, farmers, etc.