Tracy Warner contemplates the Occupy movement and the conflict between First Amendment rights and setting a precedent of not enforcing the rules: "Still, at least in Fort Wayne, the Occupiers don't seem to be causing trouble or costing much money, so it seems their First Amendment rights should prevail." He then dips into the magic bag of historical analogy and comes up with the Boston Tea Party, wondering what would have happened if that event from almost 238 years ago had been denounced as the Occupiers are today:
“How long can we tolerate these dissidents, these ne'er-do-wells who have nothing better to do than to dress like Indians and resort to thuggery and violence when they don't get their way?
And on and on, concluding with:
“Let's make these people move on before they make more demands, like free speech and freedom to protest.”
Making such comparisons is risky. For one thing, parallels are imagined that aren't really there. There isn't a lof of commonality between the passions of patriots seething on the edge of revolution and the fits and starts of dissidents in a mature republic.
And for another, a lot of people did disparage the revolution, in even stronger terms than Tracy imagines. A healthy percentage of the Colonists were Loyalists who supported the king, and when you throw in those who were neutral or just wanted to see what would happen, that's a lot of people to win over. One reason the Patriots took such a hard line against the tax on tea, in fact, wass that it was accompanied by permission for the British East India Co. to charge much lower prices than previously set, and it was feared Americans would be so seduced by cheap tea that they would let themselves be victimized by the Parliament-supported monopoly.
That brings up an interesting point Tracy didn't mention -- the collusion of Big Government and Big Business that fueled our revolutionary fervor is one complaint held in common today by the Occupy and Tea Party movements. They tend to focus on different aspects of the phenomenon and likely wouldn't suggest the same remedies, but it would be an interesting place to start the discussion.
Comments
Wait a minute, it was your guys - the Teabaggers - who first came up with the parallel. You know, the idiots with the tricorn hats, Rascal scooters and oxygen tanks screaming "keep your government hands off my Medicare!"
People treat the Boston Tea Party as a stunt, as a protest. They destroyed 40 tons of tea, however. That's nearly $11 million worth of tea at $3.59 for a gallon. the regular price for Turkey Hill, the nation's #1 brand. (Obviously, it'd be more if you got half-gallons or individual servings, but we're not cops bragging about drug busts here. The truth is good enough, and need not be exaggerated.)
And at the time, the population of Boston was 4000. That would make the damage done by the Tea Party more than $20,000 per fairly average family of 8.
Until I applied pencil to the back of an envelope, I thought the Boston Tea Party as basically a symbolic gesture. It wasn't!
Dr. Bartky and I spoke at length today about Tracy's editorial. I think there are oodles of parallels - especially when one considers how widely disparaged these rascal occupiers are. Just remember who turned out to be the patriots in the revolutionary era (hint, it was the same folks who were being criticized for rocking the boat).
Secondly, the original tea party was NOT a tax protest. They were upset because they had no voice in these new taxes. England was passing taxes to recoup the cost of the Seven Year War (French-Indian War for hoosiers), but they did not give the colonists a voice in the decision. NOBODY would have made that sort of revolutionary ruckus over the sugar tax or stamp tax or whiskey tax or tea tax or... if they had adequate representation. That's not to say there were not other factors, as Leo alludes. But the primary reason for the tea party was the fact that they had no say in the new taxes, and they had already grown accustomed to self-rule in the colonies.
This point is relevant because the occupiers do not feel like the people have a voice anymore. They feel like the corporations and the superwealthy have all the say in policy formation these days - and things like Citizens United, tax cuts for the rich while we cut funding for the social safety net, or a simple visit to K Street in D.C. only exacerbates that feeling.
Now, to the collusion of Big Government and Big Business, as Leo puts it. I have written that the one unifying thread in all the variants of the Occupy movement is their committment to the idea that money has a corrupting influence on government. Personally, I could trace this back to the rise of corporations and concentrated wealth during and after the Civil War, the effects of the Cold War, and the backlash to the Vietnam / Watergate era. Most occupiers don't know when or how things got so out of whack, but they agree that our system is out of balance.
One thing the Occupy movement HAS accomplished, besides raising awareness, is providing an impetus for new legislation. Various constitutional amendments are being floated now, and scores more are in the works.
Tea Party supporters typically blame goverment for being corrupt, and sometimes that is true. The Occupiers prefer to blame the folks who are buying the influence, rather than the ones being bought. Both groups agree that there is a problem, however.
We don't all have to agree on every issue. But we should be able to agree that money has had a corrosive effect on every level of American government. In spite of the ideological differences, there is common ground. Add to their rolls the non-partisans and independent voters who would like this mess cleaned up, and we've got the potential for correcting course on at least this one HUGE issue.
To be honest, I would consider both national movements a success if they yielded one big compromise. Locally, I will be satisfied if we can find ways to improve the community we share.
These are my own personal goals, for the record. For better or for worse, NOBODY speaks for the Occupy movement. Also, for the record, I cannot wait for the defensive posturing to die down and actual dialogue to begin. Heck, maybe it just did. :]
"Tea Party supporters typically blame goverment for being corrupt, and sometimes that is true. The Occupiers prefer to blame the folks who are buying the influence, rather than the ones being bought."
There have always been plenty of people willing to buy and there always will be. But they can't corrupt without people willing to be bought, and it is, after all, the corrupted institution of government that in turn abuses the citizenry. That's why I have crusaded most of my adult life for a smaller, less expensive and less intrusive federal government. The less influence it has over our daily lives, the less incentive there is to mainupulate it for profit or power.
It has been my experience that local government is far more corrupt than state government, and state government is more corrupt than the federal government.
If there are three county commissioners, it only takes two of them acting in concert to do things that are absolutely wicked. If you try to organize something on the state or federal level, it's far more difficult to get the ducks to line up in a row.
There are also advantages in small government. If everybody knows Johnny and agrees he needs special attention, it's not a problem that he gets special attention. That can be hard to accomplish with larger organizations.
My point? As a rule, following rules of thumb can lead one astray.
"There have always been plenty of people willing to buy and there always will be. But they can
Corey - Your comment, "---- but it would not end the human capacity for greed or cruelty", leads me to wonder what grand scheme do you have to accomplish this? Do you realize that if you have this, you have an answer to sin for all of us? And your name isn't Jesus Christ! What do you call this "new" religion? Occupyanity?
John, Madison's wisdom was in recognizing that we CANNOT end the human capacity for greed or cruelty. That is why he sought to counter ambition with ambition. It's all about checks & balances (which he borrowed from Machiavelli).
I advocate removing money from politics - this is the ideal. The actual measures to be implemented to accomplish this could take the form of constitutional amendments, or smaller, piecemeal legislation. An easy place to start is with the Citizens United case. Many would like to see the re-implementation of the Glas-Steagall act. The options are only limited by the bounds of our ideology.
As for an occupanity religion, LOL. The founders simply called it civic virtue.
Much of the concerns of occupiers are against Wallstreet (Banks) and government. Researching government spending over the past 100 years shows a dramatic shift from individual decisions to decisions being made by government and in so doing taking precious resources from workers to provide these.
Medicare is most likely the single largest cause behind our great healthcare system and also the largest problem. Medicare created the "sugar" Daddy in which I mean, it banked all innovation in areas as pharmasuticals, knee and hip replacements, x-ray, CT and MRI imaging. In this case if you build it, it works, government will pay for it. The problem is there was no means put in place to control spending. Medicare has artificially stimulated the economy at the expense of workers ability to save.
Social Security was has also distorted our economy by allowing many seniors not to spend down savings at the normal rate. This has led to a concentration of money. This was predicted decades ago. When you choke off 90% of the workers ability to save and participate in the economy, you create an economy that is not robust. It relies now on two large government programs that are not sustainable.
Larger governments require more money to fund which limits each individuals life decisions.
The only saving grace behind both Social Security and Medicare is that in 1984 Congress passed legislation that is essentially a balanced budget amendment for these two programs.
Most People support a balanced budget amendment, so why when we have expenses of the two largest program requiring balanced budgets, that we look the other way?
Social Security by law cannot borrow money. It has statutory authority to spend only those funds received from the dedicated social security tax on wages, tax on benefits and funds in the trust fund. Federal Law prohibits transferring general revenues to any trust fund.[4]
By law the trust fund cannot be drawn down to zero. The trustees must submit a report promptly to congress detailing benefit cuts or tax increases when in any given year the trust fund is projected to fall below 20% of that given years expenses. Social Security