Tea Parties and Whisky Rebels

In an earlier post I took issue with Chris Mathews because he made the right wing lunatics sound like something new. Much to Mr. Mathew’s credit he showed a brief history of this right wing hysteria. He also showed a campaign advertisement by some tea party nimrod running for congress. In the advertisement this nimrod was having an imaginary conversation with George Washington. Nimrod was complaining about big government and taxes. His advertisement made it appear as though he had something in common with George Washington and the folks who participated in the original tea party. Like most right wingers, Nimrod demonstrated his ignorance of history. The members of the modern tea party have little or nothing in common with folks who participated in the Boston tea party, and George Washington would undoubtedly reject their cause.

Participants in the Boston Tea Party were rebelling against a tax levied at a time when they were being deprived of the hard currency they needed to pay for the most basic goods and services. The deprivation suffered by the colonists was so severe that they had to resort to the barter system. In fact Spanish currency derived from smuggling was actually as common if not more common than English currency, which is why we now have the dollar rather than the pound. Saying that the modern tea party is following the legacy of our founding fathers is a major brain fart. If our modern tax protesters resemble anyone of that era it is the people who participated in the Whisky Rebellion.

It quickly became apparent to George Washington and our other founding fathers that the government had to collect revenue if it was going to provide for the common defense and do the other things a government needs to do. They, therefore, levied a tax on whisky. When the whisky producers rebelled, President Washington vigorously quelled that rebellion. The tax on alcohol financed our government clear up until Prohibition. The income tax replaced the taxes on alcohol when alcohol was made illegal. The modern day right wing is not really against the income tax; it is against any and all taxes. Like the whisky rebels, they do not want any government they have to pay for regardless of how necessary or beneficial that government may be.

Those right wing idiots will undoubtedly object to my analogy if they ever figure it out. No one wants to be told they are supporting a cause that resembles one that was on the wrong side of history and failed. This, however, is what today’s right wing is doing. They have already had their man in office. Their man was George W. Bush, and the failure of his philosophy is apparent to anyone with more than a beer soaked peanut for a brain. Under his administration the wealthy became even wealthier, and everyone else became poorer. What is needed is not less government interference. What is needed is a government that tries to level the playing field and enforces regulations that keep the powerful from exploited the rest of us. It is not taxes that are hurting the middle class; rather it is high unemployment and the precipitous drop in real wages. It does not take a genius to realize that we are getting screwed by the insurance companies, the financial institutions, and the huge corporations that are chasing cheep labor overseas. A government that works to correct those things is a good government.