On December 16 1773, colonial protesters boarded British ships moored in Boston Harbor. The ships were carrying shipments of tea that had been taxed and were set to return to England. The protesters, dressed in Native American garb, emptied the tea stores overboard and into the harbor water. The action, taken in response to what the protesters believed to be unfair taxation of colonists by the British government rather than by their own representatives, served to spur the colonies towards their ultimate revolution. This was an act of defiance in the face of unfair government action against its own citizens. It was an act of independence.

Today, the Tea Party returns to Boston. The enraged crowds, the racial epithets, the ill-informed, misguided and redirected anger, the picket signs that make no sense; it will all be prominently displayed on the Boston Common, as ten thousand people are expected to descend upon on our state capital. The movement, which gained national steam as a collection of citizens angered by what they have perceived to be the Obama administration’s wanton and reckless spending spree throughout its first several months in office, has grown in size over the past year.

Among the Tea Party faithful are the birthers (a group of conspiracy theorists who believe that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, which would in turn disqualify his eligibility for the presidency), the don’t-tread-on-me factions (those who believe that any federal action – healthcare, stimulus package, et al. -with any direct or indirect effect on citizens’ lives is illegal and worse, tyrannical), anti-gun control neurotics, anti-gay marriage bigots and an assortment of people with “Just Say No” fever. This latter group has taken it upon themselves to oppose absolutely anything and everything to come out of the White House. Constructive, don’t you think?

At the Tea Partiers’ helm, scheduled to give the keynote address tomorrow afternoon to the plaudits of the troops and for the amusement of the children, will be none other than America’s rogue princess. That’s right. The political darling of all the Joe Six-packs out there. The defender of American freedoms, whatever she considers them to be. The enemy of socialism, that scourge of western civilization. The woman with eyesight so strong, she can see Russia from her porch. Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, angry uninformed white people and more angry uninformed white people, may I present to you, fresh off signing her new reality TV show deal with TLC, the next aspiring lamb to the sacrificial presidential election altar, the one, the only, the incomparable Sarah Palin.

Wait. What? Sarah Palin? The Tea Party comes home to Boston, and this is the best they could do? Better believe it, kids. No one with any true conception of what they have to lose by speaking at a gathering like this would place themselves within 50 miles of Boston Common. Indeed, even freshman GOP Senator Scott Brown, whose special election victory in January is considered by Tea Partiers to be their most forceful victory to date, will be conspicuously out of sight.

Can’t say I blame the guy. Would you align yourself with the same people who spit on black congressmen and taunted them with racial epithets as they set out from their congressional offices to cast the landmark healthcare vote last month?

On what might seem like a less important note, I’m not sure that anyone has bothered to mention to them that their moniker is slightly misplaced. As I mentioned before, the original Tea Party was carried out by people who were enraged at the unfair and indirect taxation levied upon them by the British government. The people gathering today on Boston Common have little, if nothing in common with the colonists who dumped those boxes of tea into Boston Harbor. The grievances they lodge (Obama’s ineligibility for the presidency, the healthcare and stimulus bills’ erosion of American freedom, Obama’s baby-killing agenda, etc.) mirror absolutely none of the colonists’ grievances, but are rather a collection of ignorant and overheated claims by people who wouldn’t know it if reality shook their hand and bought them a Ferrari. 

President Obama has not raised taxes on 95 percent of Americans. He has not made any tangible move on the gun-control issue. He has appointed several Republicans to his cabinet, including former Republican congressman Ray Lahood as Secretary of Transportation and Bush administration holdover Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense.

The Health Care bill just passed by Congress will end up saving the United States close to $900 billion dollars over the next decade (estimates courtesy of the non-partisan but always slightly conservative Congressional Budget Office). The bill will also not provide federal dollars for abortion, which Obama sought to reinforce by signing an executive order, highlighting what has always been his commitment to the power of compromise. The calculated treasury department bailouts of banks hanging on the precipice of collapse are steadily bringing our financial sector back from the brink of cataclysmic failure, with the government now predicted to make sizeable profits off their investments.

All that “spending away our children’s future” muck we heard last spring? All that jabber we heard about how Democrats were trying to kill your grandma with their “death panels?” All that muck about Obama being born in Kenya and falsifying his birth certificate? Well, that’s exactly what it was. Muck. Sarah Palin and her Tea Party friends can take their muck and throw it into the Boston Harbor. It would be the only thing they’d have in common with their colonial counterparts. They can throw themselves in, while they are it. The cold water might wake them up a bit.

Charlie Felder is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].