Ferguson and The Boston Tea Party the same - hardly

Yale Prof Compares Ferguson Looters to Boston Tea Party Patriots

 The View from the Middle

I was driving to my daughter’s house today, listening to the news on the radio when I heard a story from bizarro world.  It seems that Yale University allowed Black Lives Matter activist, DeRay McKesson, to be a guest lecturer, and compare the thug, arsonist looters in both Ferguson and Baltimore to the patriotic Sons of Liberty and their Boston Tea Party back in 1773.

Of course they had the left-leaning Julie Roginsky on to defend this wacko.  To her credit, she didn’t defend his premise, but argued that all sides need to be understood when studying any issue or situation.  After all, she read Mein Kampf when she was in college and that didn’t make her a Nazi sympathizer.

That’s true, Julie, but the most important thing that should be brought out by any teaher when trying to get young minds to understand an issue is – The Truth.  And the truth is that these events are as similar as night is to day.  Let me remind everyone of the real differences between these incidents.

First, The Sons of Liberty were focused on the tea.  They were protesting the 1773 Tea Act, which taxed the tea coming into America, and more broadly the concept of taxation without representation.  There was no damage to any of the three ships involved, in fact, The Sons of Liberty actually cleaned up the ships after the tea was deposited into the harbor.  They went to great lengths NOT to damage the ships or local businesses in their protest. 

By contrast, the rioters in Baltimore and Ferguson inflicted random, indiscriminate and massive damage.  In Baltimore alone there were 250 buildings damaged and over five times the damage as the Boston Tea Party in today’s dollars.  Maybe the worst atrocity is that many of the businesses destroyed in Baltimore and Ferguson were actually minority owned.

The second difference in these events is that the tea from the Boston Tea Party was not stolen or looted, but destroyed – tossed in the harbor.  In Baltimore and Ferguson theft and destruction was the goal.  We’ve all seen the videos of people walking out of stores with shopping carts or arms full of product.  Many have suggested that most, if not all, of these looters just took advantage of the situation to make a few bucks at the expense of others.  Hardly a noble cause.

Finally, the Sons of Liberty were lead by some of America’s most honorable and patriotic men like Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Hancock and Paul Revere.  The only “leader” I can think of from either of these riots was Michael Brown’s stepfather (can you even remember his name?) as he stood on a car and yelled, “burn this bitch down.”  To compare the looting thugs of Ferguson and Baltimore to The Sons of Liberty is a manipulative deception of the highest (or lowest) order.

It saddens me that Yale University would allow this kind of distortion to be presented to their students as if it were truth.  I wish I could say that this sort of distortion is the exception, but unfortunately, it is the rule as left leaning academics put ideology ahead of truth.  And, whenever that happens we are all the losers.