This Government's War is Bing Waged at Home as Well as Abroad...

[Peter Frank]

We are being asked to believe that giving up our freedoms is the patriotic thing to do.

Under this dynamic, are not our founding fathers terrorists?!

[John Q. Citizen]

1. In America there is no difference between our domestic and our

foreign policy.

Americans have long believed foriegn and domestic policy are seperate but for a long time now they are essentially identical.

[hfojvt]

2. Certainly British and Tories thought they were traitors

But American history was written by the victors. The Boston Tea Party - was that not a terrorist act - certainly a lawless act.

The creation of Vermont is an interesting story. The governor of New Hampshire sold land that belonged to NY (okay it belonged to the Native Americans before that). Vermonters Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys had a reputation for toughness in the Revolutionary War. Yet one of the early Congresses abolished the state of Vermont, but General Washington refused to carry out that order - he did not want to mess with the GMBs. There was talk of Vermont becoming part of Canada if it was not made a state. Not alot of patriotism there, eh?

At the funeral for its victims, John Hancock hyped the "Boston Massacre"

"But I forbear, and come reluctantly to the transactions of that dismal night, when in such quick succession we felt the extremes of grief, astonishment, and rage; when heaven in anger, for a dreadful moment suffered hell to take the reins when Satan, with his chosen band, opened the sluices of New-England's blood, and sacrilegiously polluted our land with the dead bodies of her guiltless sons.


"Let this sad tale of death never be told, without a tear; let not the heaving bosom cease to burn with a manly indignation at the relation of it, through the long tracks of future time; let every parent tell the shameful story to his listening children, till tears of pity glisten in their eyes, or boiling passion shakes their tender frames.


"Dark and designing knaves, murderers, parricides! How dare you tread upon the earth, which has drunk the blood or slaughtered innocence shed by your hands? How dare you breathe that air, which wafted to the ear of heaven the groans of those who fell a sacrifice to your accursed ambition? -- But if the labouring earth doth not expand her jaws; if the air you breathe is not commissioned to be the minister of death; yet, hear it, and tremble! The eye of heaven penetrates the darkest chambers of the soul; and you, though screened from human observation, must be arraigned, must lift your hands, red with the blood of those whose death you have procured, at the tremendous bar of God."



Also, Mr. Hancock did not have alot of respect for the British troops.

"But I gladly quit this theme of death -- I would not dwell too long upon the horrid effects, which have already followed, from quartering regular troops in this town; let our misfortunes instruct posterity to guard against these evils. Standing armies are sometimes, (I would by no means say generally, much less universally,) composed of persons who have rendered themselves unfit to live in civil society; who are equally indifferent to the glory of a George, or a Louis; who for the addition of one penny a day to their wages, would desert from the Christian cross, and fight under the crescent of the Turkish sultan; from such men as these what has not a state to fear? With such as these, usurping Caesar passed the Rubicon; with such as these he humbled mighty Rome, and forced the mistress of the world to own a master in a traitor. These are the men whom sceptred robbers now employ to frustrate the designs of God, and render vain the bounties which his gracious hand pours indiscriminately upon his creatures."


I found this account of the Boston Massacre


A crowd of Bostonians begins throwing chunks of ice, oyster shells, piece of coal and other objects at a British guard near the Custom House. Captain Thomas Preston orders the main guard out to protect the sentry and restore order. After a soldier is hit with a stick, he yells "fire!" and shoots into the crowd. Other shots follow. When the shooting stops, five civilians lay mortally wounded. The incident becomes known as "the Boston Massacre."