The American Revolution Was Not a Party
Writing on the Ferguson protests and riots, Darlena Cunha claimed in Time Magazine that the Tea Party gets its name from a riot, The Boston Tea Party. Cunha went on to then claim that the Ferguson riots are in the tradition of the Boston Tea Party, which celebrates its 241st anniversary this week.
In response, a number of conservative commentators denied Cunhas claim (and many similar claims) that the two events are comparable.
Dan McLaughlin opined at The Federalist that the Ferguson Riots are nothing like the Boston Tea Party and noted that the Boston Tea Partys violence and violence it was was directed at very specific targets while the Ferguson rioters seemed to employ indiscriminate violence.
Fair enough. Tactically, the Ferguson riots have virtually nothing in common with the Boston Tea Party. In contrast to the Boston mobs destruction of the tea, the Ferguson riots were ineffective and had no clear target. The Ferguson rioters didnt even target the Ferguson government, which is clearly an operation of questionable legitimacy that appears to exist primarily to extract money from the citizens, while the police do little to actually protect private property.
So while the Ferguson riots will be remembered as pointless eruptions of misdirected violence, initiated against innocent parties, lets not pretend that the perpetrators of many protest actions during the revolutionary period did not do the same.
From the perspective of those who defend the Tea Party and condemn the Ferguson rioters, its wise to stick to defending the Tea Party specifically, because the Sons of Liberty, a loosely knit group of protestors involved in the Tea Party, and often led by Samuel Adams, were notorious for mob violence, albeit violence that was more politically effective and better-focused than most.
The Tea Party is perhaps remembered so fondly because it was among the least violent of the major protest actions perpetrated by the Sons of Liberty. The destruction of the tea, which was financially damaging to many private citizens other than the corporatist East India Company, was nevertheless relatively harmless to the private sector of Boston overall.
But when we consider the many other protest actions by the Sons of Liberty in the lead up to the beginning of the revolution, many of them could easily be described as acts of non-defensive violence, intimidation, and wanton destruction. Many tax collectors resigned their offices in fear. Others, including citizens merely suspected of supporting the British, were tarred and feathered (i.e, tortured) by the protestors.
Known loyalists were routinely threatened with physical harm to themselves, their families, and their property. Many loyalists fled the colonies in fear for their lives, and after the closure of Boston Harbor, many fled to inner Boston seeking protection form the mobs. Loyalist homes were burned, theft among Sons of Liberty was routine (hundreds of pounds were stolen from Governor Hutchinsons private home after it was ransacked by a mob of poor and working class Bostonians). Caught up in all of this, it should be remembered, were children and spouses of the guilty parties who in many cases were just low-level bureaucrats.
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The American Revolution Was Not a Party