I know that I'm fighting a losing battle here, but I'm going to fight nonetheless.
This story about our history being "founded in a tax revolt" is so deeply misleading that it borders on being outright false. I don't care how many times it gets repeated. Repetition won't make it true.
The tax revolt against which Americans rebelled was not based on a generalized hatred of taxes. It wasn't even based on a specific hatred of specific taxes. It was not "about" taxes at all. Let me explain...
Throughout the long history of the American colonies, the British raised and lowered taxes frequently, and in almost every case it provoked no organized response from the colonists. People did then what they still do today: they grumbled, did their best to avoid paying them, grumbled some more, paid them if they absolutely had to, grumbled some more, and then went about their lives. In virtually every case, new taxes didn't lead to the outbreak of a rebellion.
Until, that is, the British did something so egregious with their tax policy that the colonists could no longer stand it. That Stamp Tax that the colonists hated so much? Although there were certainly economic benefits to be had by the British, they weren't the reason they chose that specific tax. Not even close. The goal of the Stamp Act was political, not economic. It was designed to destroy newspapers and print shops across the colonies, because newspapers and print shops were being used to undermine British rule. The seeds of the rebellion pre-date the Stamp Tax by many, many years.
So why do we remember it as if the taxes were the thing? For those seeking greater independence from British rule, the new Stamp Tax was like a gift from God. Until that Act most newspaper editors, postmaster, and print shop owners had remained steadfastly neutral. They would allow anyone and everyone to print anything they desired, but they would rarely if ever comment directly on politics themselves. There were exceptions, of course - there always are, but when even Ben Franklin remained pledged to neutrality, you know something serious is going on.
The Stamp Tax threatened to put them all out of business by making paper so expensive that consumers could no longer afford to buy newspapers, and pamphleteers could no longer afford to print and distribute their ideas. The Stamp Tax was, in short, a tax aimed at curtailing political speech. It was a means to an end, a move that struck directly at the new philosophy and language of individual rights that had developed in the colonies over the past 100 years. The colonists didn't hate the tax simply because it was a tax. They hated this tax because it threatened their rights, rights they now believed had been given to them by God.
And for the postmasters and printshop owners it was actaully even worse. In most cities and towns, post offices and print shops had become important centers in their community. They were places people went to share information, a function that made their owners among the most important people in the town. For them, this tax didn't just threaten their rights and their livelihood, it threatened the entire basis of their social status as well.
But what about all that rhetoric of "taxation without representation?" Surely that demonstrates it was all about taxes, right? Again, no. That slogan really was just that: a slogan. Recognizing that they had been handed a PR coup, the opponents to British rule used their newfound alliance with editors and publishers to launch a new argument for resistance (and eventually revolt). But note the language here. It wasn't "no new taxes." It was "no taxation without representation." It was about political rights, not fiscal policy. Taxes were just one of the hooks they used to grab people's attention. It was the style of the argument, not its substance.
Consider as another example the Tea Tax. I don't care what your high school history book told you, that wasn't actually about taxes either. Like that Stamp Tax, it was a means to another end, but in this case, an economic one. The British were hoping to use the tax to interfere with colonial commerce, so they implemented it in a way that favored pro-British merchants over everyone else. This infuriated the colonists, but believe it or not most decided it was something they had no choice but to accept. In Boston, however, a small group of men had a different idea, and thus the Boston Tea Party Was born.
But notice what happened next: Most of the colonists, including those leading the movement against the British, were appalled by the attacks, and if memory serves, some - including Ben Franklin - offered to pay for the damage out of their own pockets. If the revolution had been about taxes the Tea Party would have been welcomed, but it almost uniformly was not.
So why do we remember what came next as an anti-tax revolt? Because thanks to an over-reaciton of world historic proportions by the British, a revolt was what came next. .
After news of the attacks reached England, Parliament responded with what became known in the colonies as The Intolerable Acts. The Acts were many things, but there is one thing they most certainly were not: taxes. There was the forced quartering of soldiers, the expansion of Quebec, the rigging of the judicial system even further against the colonists, the takeover of state and local governments in Massachusetts by royal governors - all actions that would become central to the revolution, the constitution, and the Bill of Rights - but no taxes. None.
So on a surface level I suppose you can in fact argue that the colonists revolted "over" taxes, but that argument is deeply misleading, and deliberately so. Today its McMegan, but tomorrow it will be someone else. Any time a conservative or libertarian wants to rail on about taxes, they trot out this myth out as evidence. "We're a tax hating nation, always have been, always will be. The revolution proves it!" The problem is that it actually does no such thing.
The colonists weren't opposed to taxes. They were fighting for rights, not against taxes. That the Boston Tea Party led to a revolution is a historical accident, and nothing more. Had it not been that it likely would have been something else, and there is certainly no guarantee that something would have been taxes. Because taxes weren't central to what the rebels were about. Not even close.
If you are going to use history to make your case, you need to look past slogans to find the deeper, more fundamental truths.
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