Tapping Sam: At 288, Adams’s Ideas Are Still Brewing
Today is the 288th birthday of Samuel Adams--"founder" of the American Revolution. Never heard of him? Or at least, only know about Sam Adams because you like the beer named after him? Well that's a tragedy because in his day--way back in 1776--Sam Adams was considered the thought-leader and brain child behind the American Revolution. Our most famous founding fathers, including John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, all credited Samuel Adams with spearheading a movement that changed the course of not only American history, but also truly, liberty and democracy across the globe for generations to come.
Samuel Adams was a modest and humble man who used the communications tools of his time--the pen, newspapers, pamphlets, and person-to-person meetings, to generate a demand for independence against the encroaching suffocation that England was imposing on the colonies.
In fact, it was only Samuel Adams who actually put into words and paper the concept of starting a revolution to break away from King George.
Today, there are many movements afoot to create a political environment that is of the people, and not, the political elite. Sam Adams would approve--and he would have been on the front lines, writing, blogging, tweeting, and probably creating facebook pages, to promote individual rights.
John Adams, cousin of Samuel Adams, has had his story be much in the limelight of history recently, with no less than an HBO miniseries and a David McCullough book (a pinnacle, indeed) devoted to his deserving and patriotic service. That would have suited Samuel Adams just fine, born 288 years ago today, though Sam’s story is in many ways so relevant to our current times.
Samuel Adams’s political genius understood that to remain free, he and his fellow colonists had to band together around an issue (seemingly trivial–Tea), and build a philosophical common understanding about where and how that freedom had to be defended. He was the first to understand the connection between taxation and core human liberties, and framed the issue in a way that allowed an American consciousness to emerge that was strong enough to fight the most powerful empire in the world.Samuel Adams had three qualities that are reflected in the Tea Partiers of the twenty-first century. He recognized the early signs of tyranny, he took responsibility for the fight that would come, and he believed in the capability and the willingness of his fellow colonists to reach that same understanding. We are all familiar with that culminating act of civil disobedience, the Boston Tea Party, but the consolidation of foment into the Sons of Liberty and the hundreds of impassioned letters he penned to all parts of the colonies urging, pleading, reasoning, and cajoling others to join the fight that allowed the first thoughts of “independence” to ever be considered with any seriousness.
Even in his personal life, he took responsibility where the law said he had none: having met adversity with his personal finances and in the situation of his birth, Adams repayed the debts of his father, even though the banks had absolved him of all responsibility.
But where his campaign took hold was with the people on the street of Boston. The ones who left comfortable lives to go out onto the streets and protest. These colonists still considered themselves Englishmen, and revered the system of law and representation that had made their lives the most free of anywhere in the world–freer even than their countrymen in.
