Historical Perspective on the Stamp Act and Protests

Today is the 246th anniversary of the enacting of the Stamp Act, so let's have a bit of historical perspective.

The Stamp Act was a direct tax on paper goods used in the American Colonies. Don't forget: at this time the people living in those colonies weren't "Americans," they were subjects of the British Crown. However, many (not all) colonists were outraged over this tax not merely because they were being taxed, but rather because the colonies did not have any seats in Parliament. Many among the colonists therefore felt they were being subjected to taxation without representation.  It was not the principle of taxation itself they opposed; it was the idea of having no say in voting in or out the people who enact the taxation. No one living in the United States of America today can claim that same problem. You may say that your representative does a poor job of representing you (and you'd have a pretty strong argument there), but that's not the same thing. You do have representation.

In their anger over the Stamp Act, Samuel Adams' Sons of Liberty began violent attacks on customhouses and the homes of tax collectors. Make no mistake--these were crimes. Violent crimes. Today, we would call them acts of terrorism. They were, unquestionably, acts of treason. Property and homes were destroyed. Fortunes were spent and lost. People were harmed. "Tarring and feathering" may sound a bit cute, but I assure you it is not. If you've ever tried to scrape solidified tar off your driveway, you can imagine how it would be to remove it from skin.

I'm not suggesting that the ultimate result of all of this--the formation of the United States of America--wasn't a good thing. But even before the Revolutionary War, there was a high cost in violence and in destruction and in blood. Some of our heroes of the Revolution were--at this time--violent, treasonous, terrorist thugs.

Let's keep all of this in mind before we blindly laud our "virtuous" Founding Fathers and blindly condemn "criminal" protesters. I honestly don't consider myself qualified to have an informed opinion of, say, the Occupy Wall Street movement. I haven't explored it sufficiently for that, to my discredit. However, for people to venerate our "Patriot Founding Fathers" out of one side of their mouths while condemning "criminal protesters" out of the other side of their mouths demonstrates a fundamental failure to grasp who men such as Samuel Adams were, what they did, what their actions meant, and what they were so pissed off about in the first place.