More texts from Ryan...

So, to share some of what Ryan is texting in his busy, jet-setting lifestyle, where the Bund is too much work to attend...

(Kidding... don't fuss)

Ryan mentions the almost perpetual disdain he holds for anything stemming from public broadcasting, especially National Public Radio. The bias is undeniable, and almost always apparent, but in this case, I'm not sure Ryan has it 100% right.

Ryan sent a text to me stating that he heard a program on NPR stating that the taxes that drove the American Revolution and the colonist's effort of independence were lower than they were after the effort was won and independence secured. He seemed to take this as an affront to his perception that tyranny and injustice were the root of our need to break our ties with Great Britain.

There is no more of an ardent admirer of what the Founding Fathers did for their constituents in 1775 through 1783 than myself, but the facts are still facts, and I agree that the primary cause of the colonist's complaints to London were not about the taxes or their amounts... but in the manner in which our grievances over them were (or were not) addressed by Parliament. To argue that the taxes paid prior to 1775 were more for Americans than they were for people living in London is patently false. Total taxes prior to the outbreak of hostilities at Concord and Lexington were less than 7%... while Londoners were paying as much as 17% and the Irish were paying 32%. At the height of American taxation with the initial implementation of the Sugar Act, Quartering Act, Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts (all later lumped together and labeled the Intolerable Acts), the cost to the American on the street was nearly half of what British subjects were paying across the Atlantic.

What drove the "Revolution" far more than taxes was the declaration by Thomas Hutchinson, Governor of Mass., that he and all his judges and lawyers were to be paid directly by the Crown, and no authority would remain with the colonial legislature. This directive was followed quickly with similar arrangements in New York, New Jersey, Conn., Maryland and Pennsylvania, and ALL colonial governorships after 1775. What taxes we were paying (regardless of amount) and the civil authority we answered to no longer had any recourse or responsibility to the people paying them... meaning the Americans. By 1774, all civil authority in the American colonies had reverted to the Crown and to Parliament, and the Americans had no say.

With the renewed interest in the "Tea Party" through resurgent political awareness happening today, the image of rebels fighting against unjust and overbearing tax burdens is an easy one to fall into, and I'm sure the NPR pundits were falling into that trap. They see the Tea Party movement as embracing the image of the "Boston Tea Party" because Americans felt the tax on tea too great to pay... when in fact, the average American would have had to drink 40 gallons of tea before they paid even one penny in taxes (my source for this is from David McCullough's fantastic work, "1776"). The problem came from the unfair nature of the tax, and the lack of means for Americans to take their case to Parliament, since the colonies had no elected members to the House of Commons, and were only represented by the few Governors of the colonies that also held seats in the House of Lords (not a very balanced form of representation).

So, if the NPR program said the revolution was about taxes, then I say they were 100% wrong. Taxes were a factor, but only in the manner in which those taxes were levied and enforced only in the colonies (since it was expected for us Americans to pay for the war fought on our behalf against the French) and with no means of redress or repeal from the people being taxed. I think that is a very good analogy to what is happening today within the Tea Party movement itself.

If, on the other hand, Ryan is denying that the taxes were LESS for the Americans than they were for the Brits, then I maintain that he is wrong. If taxes didn't rise after 1783, and new and very unpopular taxes weren't enacted by the American government, then I'd ask for a detailed explanation as to what caused the "Whiskey Rebellion" of 1791, if it wasn't new and higher taxes imposed by the government than what the people had known under British rule.

Understanding that historical facts are still facts is vitally important when talking about politics, and understanding those facts allows us to see the fallacy of the liberal argument against the Tea Party movement without having to make the untenable argument that the facts are not accurate in the first place.