The world has seen two famous tea party events, one of which was probably a bad idea.
We just marked the 250th anniversary, on Dec. 16, of the Boston Tea Party.
On Dec. 16, 1773 a group calling itself "The Sons of Liberty" boarded British ships, throwing an entire shipment of imported tea into Boston Harbor.
The reason?
It was intended as resistance to British taxation imposed on Americans.
This "party" was one of several events eventually leading to the Declaration of Independence and the resultant war.
The colonists' basic claim was that England's parliament shouldn't impose taxes on Americans, since they weren't allowed to elect representatives to it.
Their very reasonable slogan was "no taxation without representation," but revolutionary overthrow of British rule was not necessarily the best way to fix this problem.
An alternative would have been to continue demanding the right to elect representatives until London caved in.
This might have taken longer but could have avoided much of the unpleasantness caused by the American revolution and its aftermath.
Consider the unseemly compromises with southern slaveholders that were necessary in order to unite the country in 1787, and the bloody Civil War that ultimately ensued in 1861. If the British had continued governing us their abolition of slavery would have grabbed hold in 1833 . . . without the need for a war.
Abolition required strong government, which the British government was.
The United States had weak government, not up to the task until forced to strengthen itself during the Civil War.
Peaceful abolition under British rule could have made civil rights for the former slaves easier and faster. Bitterness cause by the devastating war multiplied Southern resentment of the scapegoated former slaves.
"Reconstruction" of the defeated states was sabotaged, and the federal government ultimately abandoned it.
The Americans who conducted the Boston "Tea Party" can't be blamed for failing to foresee the damage they helped bring about.
But in retrospect, their "party" may not have been a great idea.
The most famous tea party of all time was probably the fictional one depicted by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) in "Alice in Wonderland."
The principal characters were Alice, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and a Dormouse. When Alice arrives the other three are at one end of a very big table, but they cry out "No room! No room!"
Alice sits down anyway, and the March Hare says "Have some wine." Alice objects that she doesn't see any wine on the table. "There isn't any, " responds the March Hare.
"Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it," Alice replies angrily.
"It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited," says the Hare.
This gets things off to a bad start, and nonsense is piled upon nonsense in the dialog. A clock that remains stuck at 6pm (teatime), a riddle to which there is no answer, crazy followed by more crazy
Alice finally departs in disgust, telling herself "It's the stupidest tea-party I was ever at in all my life!" However Alice hadn't attended the Boston tea party.
In recent times the U.S. has seen attempts to capitalize on the fame of the Boston tea party by politicians seeking radical political changes. In the process, they may have set off scenarios that outdo Alice's "Mad Tea Party" in their craziness and might even lead to worse consequences than the Boston Tea Party.
I invite readers to imagine a modern tea party, attended by leading politicians, along the lines depicted in Alice.
Who would be your nominee to be the Mad Hatter?
Who would be the March Hare? And who would be the poor Dormouse. . . . who kept getting pinched, having tea poured on its nose, and ended up being stuffed into the teapot?
And who would play Alice's role?
This need not be a partisan exercise.
The possible scripts here could rival Lewis Carroll's hilarious fiction, except they would be in real life.
(A related article may be found here.)
Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1966, and has been a National Merit Scholar, an NDEA Fellow, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and a Fellow in Law and Political Science at the Harvard Law School. His college textbook, "Thinking About Politics: American Government in Associational Perspective," was published in 1981. His most recent book is "The Case of the Racist Choir Conductor: Struggling With America's Original Sin." His columns have appeared in newspapers in Michigan, Oregon, and other states. Read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
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