An American Tragedy—Or Melodrama

Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

The audience gathered in the town square to await the curtain’s opening draw. The atmosphere was charged with anticipation. Word of this evening’s event had spread throughout the small villages of the county. Many in the audience had come just to see if the play’s actors really had the courage to perform such a spectacle in open defiance of public ordinance.

Granny Jones, the soft-spoken owner of Needles and Friends, closed her quilt shop early this evening and had just finished delicately arranging a few chairs outside of the entrance. Frances, Martha, and Johanna—the “Friends” part of Granny Jones’ business namesake—took their assigned seats just as they did thrice weekly in front of the fireplace inside.

“Oh, aren’t we lucky tonight?” Martha rhetorically asked. “Front row seating,” she continued, acknowledging the location of Granny’s shop, centrally placed along the perimeter of the square.

Frances had just retrieved a pair of needles and ball of yarn from her handbag. She gazed at the crowd and worriedly asked, “Do you really think they’ll do it?”

“Now, don’t go fretting,” calmly replied Granny Jones, squeezing the last drop of water from the tea bag that had been steeping in the dainty pot. “Our men have been at Liberty’s Corner for only an hour. My dearest Henry will keep the young blood from getting too worked up and acting foolishly. We’re just going to sit and enjoy a pleasant spot of tea on this lovely evening.”

The comment drew an immediate response from Johanna. “Oh dear,” she said, raising a hand to her fluttering heart. “I can only hope that my Thomas would get his blood worked up a little more, if you know what I mean.” Johanna smiled and winked at her elderly friends. Each giggled and nodded their heads in agreement.

Almost simultaneously, the blissful reminiscence stopped and heads quickly turned in the direction of the disturbance. It started as a distant rumble, the chants and drumbeats growing louder as the procession worked its way from the pub, through the narrow streets and toward center stage, the curtain slowly opening for the anticipating audience.

“They’re really going to do it!” gasped Frances.

Martha calmly poured herself a cup of tea. “It appears so,” she said.

The wait seemed interminable, but within minutes the curtain burst open to reveal the boisterous revelry of angry men repeating their refrains to the drummers’ choreographed beat. The children merrily danced around the edges of the parade, whooping and hollering incoherently about nothing in particular, just instinctively knowing they had free reign this evening to emulate the adults and behave wildly in the public square—it was such great fun.

Finally, the procession leader roared the next grievance, just as the formation’s trailing ranks entered the stage. “And he massacred our own by responding to snowballs with muskets!” referring to the five colonists killed in front of the State House in Boston a few years earlier.

“Death to the King!” began the deafening chant from the former patrons of Liberty’s Corner.

When assured this line had been properly memorized by the play’s actors, the director yelled out the next complaint. “And now his parliament taxes our goods and our commerce!”

The drummers quickly altered cadence with clocklike precision to synchronize the next thunderous refrain from the cast. “Shove your taxes up your axes!”

Even Frances smiled and whispered this clever little ditty, trying to disguise her participation behind a nervous flurry of knit one, purl two activity.

Again satisfied that his troupe had well-learned their parts, the frail-looking organizer bellowed, “And they do so without giving us representation!”

All in all, it was just too much excitement and passion for the audience—including Granny Jones—who lurched from her chair, sending the teapot crashing to the cobblestone pavement. “Yes! That’s my man!” she screamed, thrusting her fist into the air as the audience joined the new recitation, “No taxation without representation!”

“Give ‘em hell, Henry!” Granny Jones continued. “And while we’re at it, let’s tar and feather those hypocritical, self-righteous asses!”

§

Such was Scene I of the play that became known as the American Experiment, a performance that was enacted across many towns and villages of the Thirteen Colonies. The taxes imposed upon the American Colonies by the Sugar and Stamp Acts provided the final impetus for the initial writing of this drama. What were these egregious taxes that caused such an uprising?

Did these Acts impose a progressive income tax on the colonists? No, the idea for such an onerous scheme did not exist.

Then surely the Acts imposed corporate income taxes, estate taxes, capital gains taxes, dividend and interest taxes, windfall profit taxes, unemployment taxes, national retirement taxes, and medical care taxes upon the colonists and their industry. No, even the moderately sane politicians in the British Parliament knew that taxing productivity, investment, and trade would result in less productivity, investment, and trade—both of which were needed to replenish the government coffers.

Well, perhaps the Acts imposed taxes on the grain that powered the horses, the water that turned the mills, the candles that lit homes and businesses, the wood that heated homes and produced the blacksmith’s flame, or the flatulence from the farmer’s cattle, because these destructive activities would change the earth’s weather patterns. Not even the genetic offspring of multi-generational royal inbreeding, the tyrannical King George III, had the audacity to think up such lunacy.

No, the much-hated Sugar Act imposed a mere 3-pence tax on each gallon of foreign molasses imported into the Colonies. The heinous Stamp Act required the colonists to buy special watermarked paper for various legal documents. Absent this special watermark, the documents held no legal standing in a court of law. Equally appalling to the colonists was the imposition of these taxes in direct violation of the British Constitution, which stated that British subjects could not be taxed without their consent, consent given by their representation in the Parliament. The colonists had no such representation.

The American Experiment has produced many additional scenes in the evolution of its unfolding drama. Among the early works were two classically liberal manuscripts born out of the passion of Scene I and the ashes of the American Revolution: the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. Through the years the drama has given us notable scenes, such as Lincoln working to free the Nation from the tyranny of slavery, and the millions of Americans who played their part in the bloody struggles for liberty across Europe. America at a crossroads, always the underdog in these struggles, and always such high stakes at risk for the Nation—the drama has been spellbinding.

Sadly, the drama has taken a turn of tragic proportions. Today, our National Government routinely violates our Constitution and imposes all manner of burdens on the citizenry; encumbrances that are in many ways more oppressive than King George III’s tyranny. Who among us would be discontent to shed our tax burden and embrace the Sugar and Stamp Acts?

And with a true sense of irony that is the hallmark of all great dramatic tragedies, the despotism of our National Government marches forward under the banner of liberalism and progressivism, while adherents to the two classically liberal manuscripts in our National play are labeled conservative extremists. Oh, what great drama this doth make!

I am not sure, however, that I would pen this present-day scene, to deliberately push the Nation to the edge of the cliff by shredding its Founding Documents and tearing apart the foundations of its society: free markets, individual liberty, and personal responsibility. It might make for great theatre, but no, I just couldn’t write that scene. For always in the audience will be those agitators who would yell, “Jump! I dare you!” and the sadists who would chime in, “Yes, Jump! I double-dare you!” And to watch a Nation founded on such noble principles as embodied in the Declaration of Independence leap from the precipice and commit suicide by embracing and succumbing to the very tyranny it rejected in Scene I—well, that would truly be an American tragedy of epic proportion.

I think instead I would write a more limiting scene with just enough conflict to remind the audience of the precious nature of freedom, perhaps a scene where the cast is tempted by the dark side of the force, convinced of the leisurely utopia they could enjoy if only they relinquished their property and freedom to the agents of an all-knowing, benevolent Government. And realizing that history has no record of such a Government, the viewers would snap out of their complacent daydreaming and recommit themselves to the Founding Principles of the Nation.

Regrettably, I cannot pen such a scene for I am but one small actor in the play. Neither can our government officials pen the scene; they have composed enough, revealing their desire to script a colossal tragedy. Neither can government-sponsored agitators pen the scene; they are a generation of actors who have already forsaken liberty in favor of an existence living off government entitlements, and who know nothing of our National Heritage and Founding Principles.

No, the only people who can author the scene playing through my mind are millions of Henry and Granny Jones’ who set their hobbies aside. It is they who recognize and have fought against tyranny; it is they who have proudly carried the torch of freedom, passed from previous generations, and passed it along to their progeny; and it is they who quietly go about doing the daily work of securing the blessings of liberty for us all.

What an uplifting scene the Jones’ can author: America once again at the crossroads, an underdog in its own land because of oppression’s rapid advance from within, and to again be victorious in the never-ending battle against tyranny. We could even add illustrious music to the setting, replete with joyous church bells ringing out and proclaiming to the world that America has once again turned a tragedy into an enlightening melodrama.

What a truly glorious melodrama that would be.