The Boston Tea Party was an act of terrorism

Was the Boston Tea Party an act of terrorism?


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I could be mistaken, but I think they now have a House of Lords and the House of Commons. And these protect them from legal subjugation, but not in all cases. I never studied any history of England, but people have rights there. Just don't spit on the sidewalk where the Royalty or the gentry live.
 
I could be mistaken, but I think they now have a House of Lords and the House of Commons.

They have had two houses since 1295. And it is this two house system that the US adopted for their own legislature.

The House of Commons (1295) is roughly equivalent to the House of Representatives, and the House of Lords (1070 - reinforced in the Magna Carta in 1215) is roughly the same as the Senate. And in that government, they are actually the ones that "hold the purse strings". No taxes can be imposed or raised without the consent of the House of Commons. They also are the house that selects the Prime Minister.

And it was the colonists having no voice in the House of Commons that led ultimately to the Revolution. As they had no representatives in that body, therefore had no say at all in how any taxes were imposed onto them.
 


King James I, a believer in the divine right of monarchs, attempted to dissolve the assembly, but the Virginians would have none of it. They continued to meet on a yearly basis to decide local matters.


Democracy in Practice​


What is the importance of a small legislative body formed so long ago? The tradition established by the House of Burgesses was extremely important to colonial development. Each new English colony demanded its own legislature in turn.


Historians often ponder why the American Revolution was successful. The French, Russian, and Chinese Revolutions each ended with a rise to power of a leader more autocratic than the pre-revolutionary monarch.

But starting with the Virginia General Assembly, Americans had 157 years to practice democracy. By the time of the Declaration of Independence, they were quite good at it.
 
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Indeed, in the eyes of the British it was sedition. In the eyes of the Colonists it was an act of rebellion against inordinate high taxes imposed upon them.

Exactly 250 years from the event that started the Revolution

18 Dec 2023 ~~ By Dan Hannan
Exactly 250 years ago, on Dec. 16, 1773, a gang of rowdies, some dressed as Mohawk braves, boarded three merchant ships in Boston Harbor and, over three hours, dumped 342 chests of tea into the cold waves. A new law had, in fact, lowered the price of tea, but they still resented paying a token levy on it.
Everyone knows the American Revolution began as a taxpayer revolt. What not everyone realizes is that that taxpayer revolt started on the other side of the Atlantic. Great Britain had had to whack up taxes to pay for the French and Indian War, and residents of the colonies were largely exempt. By the late 1760s, the average British adult paid 25 shillings a year in tax, but the average colonist paid only sixpence. British MPs, under pressure from their hard-pressed constituents, wanted to address this imbalance by making Americans assume part of the cost of their own defense.

WILL THE ECONOMY GET BETTER IN 2024?
What happened next was, in one of those ironies in which history abounds, enormously expensive for all involved. The country gentlemen in Parliament who had authorized the use of force to get revenue from the colonies ended up imposing vast new land and legacy duties on their constituents to pay for the war. American patriots who had taken up arms rather than pay what was demanded ended up, after independence, taxing themselves far more harshly than they had ever been taxed under the crown.
It turns out that people don’t care about low taxes nearly as much as they think they do. Or, more precisely, that fiscal conservatism is the first thing to go in a crisis.
The modern Tea Party movement, which claimed direct inspiration from those Bostonian hotheads, has followed the same trajectory, losing interest even as spending has surged.
“Because of tariffs we will be able to start paying down large amounts of the $21 trillion in debt that has been accumulated, much by the Obama administration,” former President Donald Trump declared at the start of his presidency, forgetting that tariffs are themselves a tax on Americans.
~Snip~
Well, I care. I care that the U.S. deficit is now the single biggest threat to its security and, by implication, the survival of the Western world order. I don’t believe that the Republican congressmen refusing to fund Ukraine are chiefly motivated by parsimony. Dislike of President Joe Biden, a lingering resentment of Ukraine’s cameo role in the Trump impeachment, and a fear of Putin-leaning primary voters are a bigger factor. But if the United States were running a surplus, they would have no excuse.

The sad fact is that, during the lockdowns, a lot of people came to expect government handouts. The reason there is no meaningful Tea Party movement is that there is no demand for one. What a sad way to mark the anniversary.
And, the fact remains that today's democrats would have been the British loyalists during the Revolution. They would have been the ones trying to identify the rebels, turning them into the British authorities, hoping for a pat on the head from their masters, just like they want to do today. They see no problem with being forced to turn over 1/4 (or 1/2 if you make enough) of their earnings to the government to waste as it pleases.
 
The colonies never had 'inordinately high taxes' for most of their existence, compared to those who lived in Britain itself. What ended was the benign neglect they benefited from since the 17th century, and when the Kingdom went bankrupt on the 1760's due to shortfalls in the East India Company's incomes the English decided the colonies should carry a lot more of their own costs, particularly defense. This was anew concept for the colonials, and they revolted, at least a few did at first; British arrogance and their military's atrocities won over support for the revolt, from around 10% of the colonials to around 70% by the 1780's. The Brits went out of their way to piss off as many colonials as they could.
 

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