On a cold December night in 1773, some seriously annoyed British subjects held a tea party aboard three ships in the service of the East India Company. Now this wasn’t your typical, genteel English tea party. In fact, it was more like a rowdy masquerade party hell-bent on raising a ruckus.

Samuel Adam’s Sons of Liberty, in their amateurish Narragansett costumes, quickly dispatched 45 tons of very expensive tea into Boston Harbor. Their purpose was not to caffeinate local fish populations but to send a message to King George and the British Parliament some three thousand miles away.

The brouhaha was not over the high cost of taxes. The Tea Act actually allowed the East India Company to sell tea directly to the colonies without “payment of any customs or duties whatsoever” to Britain, instead paying the much lower American duty. This tax break allowed the East India Company to sell tea to the colonists for half-price, much less than their fellow countrymen in England were paying.

But the removal of the tea tax was seen as favored treatment for a powerful economic interest and a further attack on the colonists’ freedoms. Moreover, it put colonial merchants and wealthy tea smugglers (most notably, John Hancock) at a huge disadvantage.

The Boston Tea Party was one of the opening salvos in America’s quest for Independence. American resentment of England’s tyrannical rule would brew for two and half more years before separation was formalized in Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.

As most school children know, fighting ended on October 19, 1781 when Cornwallis and his “redcoats” surrendered to General Washington at Yorktown, Virginia. The chains that bound us to England were formally broken by The Treaty of Paris in 1783 when the United States was recognized as an independent country.

In the 18^th Century, tyranny was pretty overt. Monarchies viewed their subjects has chattel and their territories as fertile ground to harvest as they saw fit.

Thousands upon thousands of American patriots suffered and died to loose the “light yoke” of King George and to break away from the monarchy. Liberty now meant that they, not George, had control over their lives and their affairs.

Today, tyranny has taken on new and subtle forms. These forms are just as menacing, however, as the tyrant king. People who have power over us often put their interests over ours. And more often than not, we are at the mercy of a small clique of persons whose power derives from their economic status, their station in the community, their affiliations, and their political influence.

In the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “The only tyrannies from which men, women, and children are suffering in real life are the tyrannies of minorities”. TR was not talking about ethnic or religious minorities. He was making a not-so-veiled reference to the oligarchies and the powerful economic interests of the day.

Tyranny is not limited to our system of government and to those public servants who have perverted the principles and ideals that are the bulwark of our Republic. We’ve all been unwilling passengers of bureaucratic (both private and public) freight trains and have been subjected to “processes” that are well beyond our control.

Each of us has our own list of grievances, but here’s mine:

The tyranny of doublespeak, misdirection, and mendacity: Equivocation, false dilemmas, weasel words…… The hits just keep on coming. From the pen of Marshall McLuhan, “Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flock in the ways of utility and comfort.”

The tyranny of willful ignorance: If the facts don’t jibe with your world view then concoct your own facts. Who needs empirical evidence? If there’s no “commonsense” evidence it ain’t so.

The tyranny of politicians who refuse to bend to the public will: Now I readily admit that the majority isn’t always on the right side of an issue (much has been written about the tyranny of the many). I am the first to applaud leaders who take principled stands. But it is also true that out leaders are our representatives and often our only voice in this grand experiment we call democracy.

The tyranny of self-serving, moneyed interests: Our political system is driven by huge sums of cash and cash buys access. In our “pay to play” system, we common folk often find ourselves on the outside looking in.

The tyranny of arrogance: Too frequently, scornful and dismissive politicians are loath to deviate from their scripts and ideological agendas. Nothing can sway them for they are on a mission whose purity can not be compromised.

Now, I’m not advocating a Tea Party, but we need to confront tyranny wherever we encounter it. We need to participate in our democracy, uphold our democratic and moral principles, and hold our leaders to account whoever they may be.

Copyright © 2008 Frank Schiavone

Frank Schiavone can be reached at fschiavone@verizon.net