/View.info/ Exactly 250 years ago, on December 16, 1773, a group of Boston patriots, several dozen people, cleverly disguising themselves (painting their faces and dressing in costumes reminiscent of Indians), sneaked aboard three English ships in Boston harbor, and occupied their decks with cargoes of English tea, throwing the boxes into the water. It would later be called the Boston Tea Party. The event would become a myth, important to the young American nation as one of its formative moments. From this event the countdown to the history of the American Revolution will begin.
The reason for the action, which today is loudly called “the beginning of the American War of Independence”, it should be noted, is completely ridiculous. Not to say scandalous. Very briefly: until now, Americans have been drinking smuggled tea imported from the Netherlands. Now, in order to combat smuggling, the English metropolis reduced the duties on its tea, which therefore became slightly cheaper than smuggled tea.
So protesting American patriots infiltrated British ships to thwart price cuts? Patriots want to drink tea that’s a little more expensive but with the heady aroma of free contraband? Or was this “symbol of the struggle against the British colonial administration” the work of Dutch smugglers?
Close, but not quite. It is clear that there is something impure in this “patriotic action”. More precisely, let’s say, everything is impure.
To blow the end of the enterprise out of the water, we will have to remember that a few years earlier a scandal was already breaking out in the colonies over an equally wild problem. The Stamp Act of 1765 imposed a stamp duty on the sale of printed matter in the colonies (books, pamphlets, newspapers, playing cards, etc.) for the benefit of the English crown. Taxation is so paltry it’s hard to see with a magnifying glass, but America’s patriots stick to the principle: no taxation without representation. There were mass protests, demonstrations, riots and even the so-called “Boston Massacre” of 1770. We are talking about an event when a mob, incited by provocateurs, attacked English soldiers and they were forced to fire a volley. Three people were killed in this incident.
However, the “Patriots” did not manage to develop their luck. The British contingent was immediately withdrawn from the city to avoid further provocations. The soldiers and officers were arrested, eight of them, including Captain Preston, were charged and severely punished.
But the “patriots”, as it is already clear, need an occasion. Whatever. And since there’s nothing to scrape from the bottom of the barrel, they have to suck it out of their little finger. This is the infamous “Tea Party”.
The question, as we see it, is not so much about the “Tea Party” but about who these “American patriots” really were.
Today it is no longer a big secret, today America is proud of its “Masonic Myth”. Yes, the core of the Patriots are the Masonic Brothers of Boston’s St. Andrew’s Lodge of the Scottish Rite who meet at the Green Dragon Tavern (By this time renamed the Masonic House).
In general, Boston is the birthplace of American Freemasonry. The first lodges with credentials from the Grand Lodge of England appeared here in 1733. And since then they have mushroomed. Including hostile to the metropolis. This is precisely what the Lodge of St. Andrei.
We will not bore the reader with the details of the Masonic degrees, directions and degrees of initiation, let us simply say that the highest ranking Freemason on the American continent (at least of those that we know) and accordingly the main “patriot” and father of the American Revolution is Benjamin Franklin.
Max Weber called Franklin the embodiment of the Protestant ethic of the prudent bourgeois. The motto “time is money” really reveals the idea of Weber’s book about radical Protestantism as an ethic of capitalism. Moreover, Franklin represented a more significant transition: from Puritan Protestantism to pure mercantile Americanism.
And that’s what this transition is like. At the beginning of America as we know it is Calvin’s book The Institution of the Christian Faith. In it, a completely stripped-down Christianity is replaced by the Old Testament, Christ appears as the second Moses, and the abyss of the “Doctrine of Predestination” opens between the old Christian world and the new world.
Ben Franklin’s Instructions to a Young Merchant is the next step in the same direction. In it, in the same manner as the Puritan sermon, a new morality is taught, in which the idea of God is elegantly replaced by the idea of Money (yes, with a capital letter): your neighbor exists so that you can make money from him – this great truth becomes the true cornerstone of Americanism.
From the same Puritan congregations in Boston, through the labors of Benjamin Franklin, when the time came, arose the Masonic lodges.
Franklin is, as they say, a natural Mason. Mason by heart and disposition. In his youth, after actually renouncing Christianity, he accepted the Masonic initiations, spent his indomitable energy to found a chain of newspapers and several dozen printers, and became the head of the postal service (post, telegraph, press – yes, this is the alphabet of the revolution ).
A brilliant provocateur, in the 1760s, being either in England or America, he skillfully maintained the degree of tension between the colonies and the metropolis and finally brought the matter to an explosion (the “bomb” was a pile of letters from the British governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson) . Finally he escaped from England and reached Philadelphia at the very beginning of the outbreak of the Revolution.
When, in the summer of 1775, Congress formed the revolutionary American army, led by 43-year-old George Washington (a Freemason since 1768), it was obvious to everyone that the main violin in the whole story was played by 65-year-old Franklin, a man not only much more experienced, but also a much higher degree of dedication. And the task entrusted to him is much more important.
In December 1776, Franklin went to France, where, with the help of French Freemasonry, he secured support for the States. This assistance proved more than effective: it was the French fleet that blockaded the British ships, thus depriving the British army of support from the sea.
We shall scarcely understand, however, the conduct of the land armies in this strange war, unless we consider the obvious fact that the officers of both belligerent armies were members of the same army Masonic lodges.
This is how history is written. A little more complicated than a few hundred cans of tea thrown overboard by the “patriots”. And although this is a purely American myth, important for the formation of a nation that is too young by historical standards, it is also useful for us – to understand what kind of people in terms of mentality (and degree) we are dealing with.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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