There are those who say the President’s tariffs are a departure from our national character. I say they have not read their history, and I say it with love, and also with a pamphlet.
Consider the Founders. They were, above all, men who understood the value of a strong leader who was not afraid to tax foreign goods. When a cargo of tea arrived in Boston, they did not ask whether it was cheap. They asked where it came from. The answer was “abroad,” and that was enough for them, as it is enough for me.
The Founders believed that a tax on imported goods, levied by a powerful executive across an ocean, was the surest sign of a nation that meant business. That is why, in 1773, they assembled at the harbor to express their feelings about exactly such a tax.
I want to be careful here, because a lesser columnist would lose her nerve at this point in the argument.
It is true that the tax the Founders objected to was a tax on imported tea, imposed by a strong executive who did not need to ask their permission. And it is true that their response was to throw the tea into the harbor. A weaker thinker would conclude from this that the Founders opposed such taxes. But that is not what happened. What happened is that the Founders saw a tax on tea and threw the tea away, so that it could not be taxed, which is to say they made certain that the tax could never be paid by anyone but the harbor. In other words, they supported the tariff completely. They simply wanted to make sure it was applied to the fish.
Once this is understood, the path forward is clear.
On Saturday, I gathered every box of imported tea in my home, which came to 14 boxes, including a tin of Earl Grey that was a gift from my sister-in-law and which I now understand to have been a provocation. I drove them to the public boat launch on Route 9, and at 7:42 a.m., in the presence of a man fishing for perch who did not ask to be part of history, I threw them into the reservoir, one at a time, saying the name of a Founder with each box. There are not 14 Founders whose names I could recall with confidence, so the last four boxes were thrown in the name of “the other ones.”
I am not proud of what I did to the Earl Grey. But I am a patriot, and patriots do not get to choose which tea.
The man fishing for perch asked me whether I was protesting the tariffs or supporting them. I told him that, in the tradition of the Founders, there is no difference, and that the harbor is where both positions go to be correct. He moved his chair.
Some readers will ask what I am now drinking. I am drinking reservoir water, which I collected on Sunday from the spot where I dropped the tea. It tastes faintly of bergamot and very strongly of liberty. It is the most American beverage I have ever had, because it is tea that was imported, taxed, rejected, and then reclaimed by a citizen with a bucket, and that is the whole story of this country in one cup.
Next week: what the Founders would have said about a ballroom, and why they would have wanted it to be bigger than the house.