Scores of Americans are protesting taxes by holding “Tea Parties” in dozens of cities across the country, but what kind of tea are they serving? The problem is that just about every kind of tea has something that makes it a bad choice. For example:

• Black tea — it would seem to be a good choice, except that it’s likely to be Lipton Black Tea, which is owned by Unilever, which is based in Europe, and it just doesn’t seem very patriotic for Americans to denounce their own country’s tax system with a foreign product.
• Green tea — it, too, would seem to be a good choice because it’s so rich in antioxidants, except that singling anything out because it’s “rich” is what protestors are protesting, because that’s exactly what a progressive tax system does: singles out those who make more and demands that they pay more.
• Chamomile tea — clearly too calming, since the last thing protesters want is to be so relaxed they don’t have enough rage and frustration to march and chant “Give me liberty, don’t give me debt!”
• Starbucks Chai tea — easy to get, but considering its already-high price includes an 8% or so sales tax, it would seem to go against the spirit of the protest to pay some of the very taxes protestors are protesting against.
• Herbal tea — as “Tea Parties” have been carefully orchestrated by conservatives (to appear spontaneous), anything “herbal” would obviously be way too New Age.
• Darjeeling tea —this is bad because maybe our tax rate wouldn’t be so high if all those jobs that have been outsourced to India, where this tea comes from, hadn’t whittled away at the U.S. tax base?
• Genmai Cha tea — the problem here is that this type of tea was created by peasants who were trying to make their money go farther, and since peasants don’t pay taxes (and sometimes leech off those who do) this tea clearly sends the wrong message.
• English Breakfast tea — the historical symmetry is nice, but also troubling, since the government the original Sons of Liberty attacked with their Boston Tea Party was England, which then spent the next hundred years going from being the #1 country in the world with a huge empire to what it is today, and even the most ardent anti-tax conservatives probably don’t want to see that happen to the U.S.
• Rooibos tea — too hard to pronounce.
• Lapsang Souchong tea — not just foreign, but Chinese, which is even worse since part of the reason U.S. taxes have to be as high as they are is to pay the interest on the $2 trillion we owe the Chinese. Plus, it’s also known as Russian Caravan Tea, and it’s likely the mostly conservative protesters still hate those commie bastards.

All of which leaves Long Island Iced Tea, which isn’t even tea but a near-100% alcohol cocktail, which probably makes sense since you’d have to be drunk to think protesting will do any good.