(???)
Ken Hoagland, Chairman Online Tax Revolt/FairTax National victory Campaign
(??? singer ???)
Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform
Michele Bachmann of Minnesota
(???) Congressman John Linder, from Georgia
In 1754, George Washington led an unprovoked sneak attack on a French and Indian party in Jumonville Glen, Pennsylvania. Among those killed, clubbed to death after capture, was the brother of the French governor of what is now Pittsburgh. The event sparked what is known here as the French and Indian War but was actually part a worldwide war known as the Seven Years' War.
The Seven Years' War nearly doubled Britain's national debt. The Crown, seeking sources of revenue to pay off the debt, attempted to impose new taxes on its colonies. The American colonies, like other parts of the British empire, were expected to pay their share of the taxes. Being Americans, we had caused the war, we benefited from the territory acquired because of the war, and were thrilled to be able to push hostile Indians further away from their land. But we sure didn't want to pay for any of this. So when the British sent ships into Boston Harbor in 1773 with taxed tea, proud Americans climbed aboard the ships and dumped the tea into the harbor. Eventually, we went to war with England.
200-plus years later, the almost entirely white, anti-government groups have embraced the Boston tea party as their emblem. Coming into DC on tax day on either tax-subsidized mass transit or driving on tax-subsidized roads, they assembled on the tax-subsidized Freedom Plaza park and spoke against taxes. The irony of making the Boston Tea Party their emblem is apparently lost on the group.
They see the American Revolution as a war over freedom, not debt and obligation. But their notion of "freedom" seems to only apply to things they want. They're supporting liberty for fundamentalist Christians, gun owners, tax resisters, etc. As Sarah Palin says, "Is this what their 'change' is all about? I want to tell them, 'Nah, we'll keep clinging to our Constitution and our guns and religion -- and you can keep the change." Freedom and liberty don't apply to gays, Hispanic immigrants, Jews, Muslims, etc.
They're pro-family but divorce (thank you Ronald Reagan) and illegitimate kids (thank you Bristol Palin) are now fine while gays wanting to get married are excluded. They say the Constitution is sacred and decry how "socialists" are trying to restrict the second amendment (which may or may not support private gun ownership), while they themselves try to restrict the income tax which is explicitly permitted under the sixteenth amendment.
It'll be interesting to see how this movement ends up. Like the Know Nothings and McCarthyism and other intolerant movements which claimed to support liberty in the past, the Tea Party will die out eventually and only the embarrassment of its existence will remain. But I'm curious how much damage it will do in the interim.
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