Four things you probably didn't know about the Boston Tea Party

Bruce reblogs (am I using that right?) a piece by tax historian Joseph Thorndike. It's a great read. Here enough to give you a taste:

1. The Tea Party was not a protest against high taxes. The Boston Tea Party was certainly a tax protest, but it was not a protest against high taxes. In fact, it was sparked by a tax cut, not a tax hike.

2. The Tea Party was prompted by a corporate bailout. What's not to like about cheap tea? Plenty, at least when it comes as part of a corporate bailout. Because that's what the Tea Act was: an 18th-century version of corporate welfare.

3. The Tea Party was a grass-roots movement -- with an element of AstroTurf. What moved Bostonians to activism? Ideology certainly played a role. But so did political leadership, particularly on the part of the Sons of Liberty, Adams, and Boston's merchant class.
4. The Tea Party wasn't always a touchstone of American nationalism. The Tea Party looms large in the annals of American civil disobedience. Who can't warm to the notion of outraged citizens moved to public action against monopolistic tyranny?

Well, as it turns out, quite a few people.