-By Warner Todd Huston
It has been revealed that some Texas schools were teaching that the Boston Tea Party, an event widely understood as having helped spark the American Revolution, was actually a “terrorist” attack on British authorities.
At least up until January of 2012, Texas schools utilizing the history curriculum from CSCOPE, a non-profit and supposedly non-partisan education service, taught that the most famous tax protest in American history was akin to terrorism.
The tact taken to discuss the event was to engage kids as if the Boston Tea Party had just occurred and was a current news report.
News report: New Act of Terrorism
A local militia, believed to be a terrorist organization, attacked the property of private citizens today at our nation’s busiest port. Although no one was injured in the attack, a large quantity of merchandise, considered to be valuable to its owners and loathsome to the perpetrators, was destroyed. The terrorists, dressed in disguise and apparently intoxicated, were able to escape into the night with the help of local citizens who harbor these fugitives and conceal their identities from the authorities. It is believed that the terrorist attack was a response to the policies enacted by the occupying country’s government. Even stronger policies are anticipated by the local citizens.
The teacher’s guide instructed teachers to judge the Boston Tea Party by “the criteria of a terrorist attack” and told teachers to ask kids if they thought the event was a terrorist attack.
Do you think that in the eyes of the British that the Boston Tea Party was a terrorist activity? Why or why not? Were the colonists justified in taking this action due to their beliefs? is anyone ever justified in committing these types of activities? What drives people to do this type of activity? These are the things that we will explore further.
As The Blaze reports, this anti-American lesson plan was also barred from parents’ view in contradiction to the Texas State constitution that maintains that parents have a right to access the materials that teachers are using to educate their children.
At this point, there is some confusion as to whether or not this lesson plan is still in use, but there isn’t much question that it once was.
As to whether or not the Boston Tea Party was really an act of terrorism, it is hard to claim that a protest over taxes that targeted only merchandise — and not people or property (buildings/homes) — fits the normal definition of what an act of terrorism is today.
By defining the Boston Tea Party as terrorism, wouldn’t that make any civil unrest an act of terrorism? And in a nation built on personal freedom and a questioning of power, would that be the best message to send?
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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