Reviewing the Review - Part 1

I've given a great deal of thought to whether or not I should respond to the so-called "Rochester Review." With consideration for the fact that one of the most outrageous statements in that propaganda sheet was aimed directly at me by way of quoting one of my remarks, I wondered whether or not I should be the one to take that so-called "newspaper" apart piece by piece.

In the end, I decided that the "Review" could not be left unanswered. Given the fact that the Democrats have given us so much material with which to work (by the way, if any Democrats are reading this, thanks so much, it was really thoughtful of you to put your feet in your collective mouths yet again), my review of the "Review" will come in several parts.

Instead of going page by page, I'm going to start with the mudslinging attack leveled by the Democrats at me. The Nameless Editor and Reporters of the Review have seen fit to claim that the statement "The Tea Party begins tonight" is a call to violence. The fact is, the Tea Party quote came from me. Furthermore, the Democrats know - for a fact! - that I would never call anyone to violence. I was one of the few people who called Supervisor Duke and Councilman Miller following the "nails in the driveway" incidents at their homes and expressed my outrage and condemnation of those acts.

This statement in their propaganda publication is an unarguable indicator of the fact that Liberal Democrats will not hesitate to stoop to twisting (and, at times, falsifying) the truth in order to achieve their goals. Not only did they interpret a statement by someone who has always condemned the use of force in politics as a call to violence, they have shown an astounding lack of understanding for American History.

What is commonly referred to as the "Boston Tea Party" was anything but violent. The events leading to the Tea Party began with the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Act of 1767, which decreed a tax on tea to be paid to the British Government despite the lack of colonial representation in Parliament ("No taxation without representation.") John Hancock (who later became the first signer of the Declaration of Independence) was arrested for tea smuggling and was defended by John Adams (who was later the President of the United States as well as the father of President John Quincy Adams). The charges were eventually dropped.

Hancock then organized a boycott of Chinese tea imported by the British East India Company, which resulted in their tea sales dropping from 320,000 pounds to 520 pounds. In response, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act allowing the Company to sell directly to colonists, which it could not do previously.

In November of 1773, the first ship filled with direct sale tea, the HMS Dartmouth, arrived in Boston Harbor. The boycotters organized a series of protest meetings, each larger than the previous. Over 8,000 people attended the protest meeting of December 16, 1773. That night, 30 protesters dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded the Dartmouth and her sister ships - the HMS Beaver and the HMS Eleanour and quickly moved 45 tons of tea to the deck and dumped it into Boston Harbor.

According to Wikipedia, "Nothing else had been damaged or stolen, except a single padlock accidentally broken and anonymously replaced not long thereafter."

The Boston Tea Party was not violent by any stretch of the imagination. It was the first in a long line of honorable acts of the civil disobedience which has long served as a check on Government power run amok. Its moral successors included the Underground Railroad and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Invoking the memory of the Boston Tea Party has nothing to do with violence and everything to do with finding ways in which to refuse the edicts of a power mad Town Government. By doing so, by finding the laws which are unjust and anti-freedom and refusing to obey them, we will make the Town Board irrelevant. That, by the way, is one of their greatest fears.

The fact of the matter is, not only do we realize that violence is unacceptable, we know that it is unnecessary. The real power already belongs to the people. No Town laws will have any force if half of the Town view them as having no authority over our lives.

That is not violence, it is simply democracy.