Sorry; again, it just keeps coming up!

Today I happened to come across the following in an old comments section:

“Imagine that a father gave his teenage son every liberty, so that the son was accustomed to making all his decisions for himself and living his life as he chose. Then suddenly one day the father without warning announces: “I am your father, you must obey my every word.” The son is naturally going to rebel at this. That’s what happened between Great Britain and the colonies starting in the 1760s. The colonies had been self-governing as to their internal affairs including taxation for their entire history, and then the king suddenly asserted a prerogative over them that he had never asserted before. Rebellion was inevitable.”
-http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/001720.html

I’ve heard this or similar analogies a few times, and it’s not a very good one.

In the first place it, of course, misses a lot of facts, though as they’re facts that don’t get mentioned much, that isn’t surprising: such as that, far from there being ‘no warning’, the colonists were told the Stamp Act was coming and invited to suggest alternatives a year in advance (and similar proposals had been suggested on both sides of the Atlantic from as early as 1713), or that Parliament had often passed laws governing their internal affairs throughout the history of the colonies (e.g. the postal service, established in 1710 by act of Parliament), etc. And it once again ascribes the whole affair to the king rather than Parliament (albeit the king was in favor of the measures, though remember that he didn’t have the power to impose or rescind them).

Not to mention, of course, even if that were a fair analogy, would it really justify the boy punching his father and storming out of the house? Especially if the father’s arbitrary commands were things like “I expect you to get a summer job and contribute to the family support” or “you’re sharing a room with your brother”? That is, commands that are irksome and arbitrary, but hardly abusive.

A more fitting analogy (it seems to me) would be something like a son growing up under a very lax and permissive father, who, upon reaching a certain age, is told that it is time he started contributing to the family support, at least in so far as paying for his own expenses, especially as he had just incurred a very expensive liability for the whole family. The son takes offense at this and refuses. The father tries a number of different compromises and alternate suggestions to make it easier for him, but the son just keeps insisting that it’s his money and his life and he shouldn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want. The argument gets more and more heated until finally father and son have a fight in which the son punches his father and storms out the door.

The fact that the son went on to become a millionaire kind of kills its potential as a morality play.