2,500 years ago, a smart guy named Lao Tzu wrote about mistakes. He wrote in Chinese, but here’s an approximate translation.
A great nation is like a great man.
When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent teachers.
It’s hard to admit our mistakes, and even harder to correct them. Ask me how I know.
But in spite of my many mistakes, I’m willing to be a benevolent teacher.
The big July 4th mistake isn’t one that you can blame me for, because I wasn’t even born in 1776, when they signed the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. “They” being 56 businessmen and plantation owners and bankers and newspaper publishers. Little did they know what a dumb move they were making.
From what I remember from high school history class, the whole dispute was mainly about a tax on tea. Tea being a very popular beverage in 1776, because Coca Cola hadn’t been invented. Also, tea seemed, to the American colonists, to promote health, for reasons that were unclear at the time.
When you made tea, you boiled the water first, which killed the dangerous bacteria that no one knew about in 1776.
Beer was also popular, and it also involved boiled water, but King George and the British Parliament hadn’t figured out how to tax it successfully, because people typically brewed their beer at home, from local barley. Beer not only promoted health; it also promoted pregnancy, which was, back then, thought to be a beneficial thing.
So, no tax on beer, for several obvious reasons.
But the British definitely knew how to tax tea, because it came from India, and it had to make a stopover in England to get inventoried and packaged.
The British Parliament passed the Tea Act in May 1773, to allow the British East India Company to have a monopoly on the tea trade in the American colonies. This meant that the American colonists were not allowed to buy tea from any other source. In exchange for this monopoly, the British East India Company agreed to collect the tea tax.
All of which led directly to a protest known as the Boston Tea Party, when a bunch of angry colonists got dressed up as Indians and dumped 342 chests of East India Company tea into the ocean. To judge by historical illustrations, they were cheered on by a large, enthusiastic crowd. Probably beer drinkers.
I don’t fully understand why the protesters dressed themselves as Indians. But the British authorities were not fooled, and the Parliament promptly retaliated with the Intolerable Acts — four punitive measures meant to assert British authority in America.
I’m pretty sure everyone could see, by now, where this thing was headed. For one thing, to the Declaration of Independence, and a nasty eight-year-long war.
Big mistakes!
Even after the Tea Act of 1773 was imposed on the colonies, the American colonists were still paying less for their tea than the citizens in England. This was because the East India Company was in financial straits, with 17 million pounds of unsold tea sitting in their warehouses, and they were trying to unload it in America.
But the American colonists didn’t like the idea of paying taxes, because they didn’t have representation in the British Parliament. “No taxation without representation!” That was the cry, as people worked themselves into a political frenzy.
Little did they know the huge mistake they were about to make.
Yes, 250 years later, we are able to elect representatives to Congress. But we’re now paying taxes on everything.
If only we had remained loyal British subjects. We would have free medical care. The Beatles wouldn’t have been foreigners. We could have celebrated the coronation of King Charles last month, along with the rest of the British Empire. We’d have the BBC on the telly. (And yes, we could call it “the telly” and not feel stupid.)
Thinking about this terrible mistake — independence — I can no longer bring myself to drink tea.
I understand that the Town of Pagosa Springs is going to great lengths to celebrate “Independence Day” with a parade down Main Street, and vendors in Town Park, and fireworks in the evening at Yamaguchi Park.
I’m going to stay home, in protest… and drink beer… to drown my sorrows.
Highly taxed beer.