Tea Parties

Once, when I was trekking across Scotland, I stayed in a Bed & Breakfast & our hostess asked us to tea.

In my American mind, a tea party.

In reality, a High Tea.  I was expecting tea & little cucumber sandwiches & scones.

What was presented was a meal, including tea & little cucumber sandwiches & scones & breads & meat & cookies & desserts & fruit & more tea & a bit of Scotch Whiskey at the end.

And conversation.  That was the best part of the Tea Party – people from all over the world, converged in a B&B, sipping tea & nibbling scones, talking & exchanging experiences & ideas.

That was a Tea Party movement

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Curious about why people are so willing to follow the banner of the new Tea Party (which does not seem to involve sharing food or goddess forbid, ideas), I researched that moment when people in Boston threw tea leaves overboard rather than submit to the colonial nation’s edict.

At the time, the East India Company had a Parliament mandated monopoly on tea imported to America (why does this sound so familiar?). The colonists could receive tea (a staple in their lives) at a discounted rate if they paid the tax.

Pissed them off, those tea loving Americans.  If they paid the tax, took the cheaper price of tea, they would succumb to being taxed without representation.

So they threw the tea into the harbor & launched the beginnings of a revolution.

Now, I am trying to draw a corollary between the current Tea Party & their rhetoric & those rebels in the bay.

If the current Tea Party does not feel represented – whose responsibility is that?

Those Tea Party voters.

Thinking back on that Tea Party in Scotland,  I marvel at the generosity of our hostess, at the candor of the participants, the wonder the food & conversation ignited.  That I left the afternoon energized.

Think about it Tea Partiers – think about where you are coming from & more importantly, think about where you claim your roots began.  And why a group of rebels threw a staple of their lives into to the harbor.

It was not about disagreeing with a current administration, or disagreeing with a political party.  It was not about staking a claim or an ideology.

It was about taking responsibility.  

Forget the rhetoric – forget the catch phrases.  Forget the news bites. 

If you really want to serve this country, remember how it began. 

Not as a Jerusalem on a hill, not as mankind’s salvation (I do recall that was established when the veil separating us from the holy of holies was rent), not as the moral center of the universe.

Just a place where no one had to pay a tea tax to a monopoly governed by an entity that did not let their constituents vote.

If you truly want to have a Tea Party movement, invite & include your neighbors who disagree & serve some tea & scones.

Keep up the tradition.