Just a hit and run post that seems appropriate for the time of year. If I can work it out tomorrow, I’m doing a longer version of the people behind the real history of the Revolution – one that even noted historians, Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin are ignorant of ;-)

People like Mercy Otis Warren, and the citizens of Worcester Mass., the citizens of Bellingham, and Pittsfield, and Sandisfield. The Maryland county conventions instructing their representatives – who walked out – to get back to the Continental Congress and more. The founding of this country wasn’t a top down affair – it was very definitely bottom up

You see, it wasn’t a protest against taxes per se, in reality it was about corporate subsidies. What follows are excerpts from an article on Thom Hartmann’s website awhile ago, based on the reminiscence of George R.T. Hewes, who was one of those who dumped the tea in the harbor

[...]

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.

[...]

… 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.”

Honestly, go read it all. Both versions of the story, from Daniel Cay Johnston, and the article, are consistent with one another and everything else I’ve come across.

It really is sad that so many people nowadays are duped into believing the absolute lies and trash being disseminated by the media (I’m looking at you Fox, and Rush) and those they support and elevate.