In case you have not been following the news, conservatives in several cities and communities are hosting “Tea Parties” to protest Obama’s budget and stimulus package. On April 15, a group called “Tax Day Tea Party” is calling for all angry Americans to take to the streets in a national “Tea Party.”
The organizers of these “Tea Parties” are, of course, making appeals to the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773. But are they using this historic event correctly? The best thing I have read on this issue so far is Benjamin Carp’s post over at Public Occurrences 2.0. Carp argues that there are few similarities between the Boston Tea Party and these modern day “Tea Parties.”
The Tea Party in Boston was a protest against big businesses. That was an attempt to empower those who had little. The present tea party movement does not resemble that original intent. It is a conservative movement that attempts to perpetuate the status quo–after all, that is what the word conservative stands for.
http://tuftsjournal.tufts.edu/2009/01_1/features/02/