Were the founding fathers terrorist to the British?

Question

Does anyone remember the tea party?

Answer 1

In a very real sense, yes.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. It just depends on what side you're on.
Unlike the terrorists of today, they never targeted innocent civilians, and without them, the US constitution and Bill of Rights would never have been written. I will call them the ultimate freedom fighters.

Answer 2

Throwing tea crates into a harbor is worlds away from bombing a crowded marketplace. Doubtless the King considered the founding fathers as something akin to terrorists (since the term didn't exist then), but nobody would call them that today. They tried diplomacy first, and when that didn't pan out, they raised a standing, uniformed army to wage a conventional military campaign against British military forces in the colonies. They obeyed what were the laws of war at the time, and all the fighting was waged against legitimate military targets. If the terrorists we are dealing with today conducted themselves like this, we would be willing to negotiate with them, and they might actually get some of the things they want.

Answer 3

No.

I don't believe the founding fathers set out to kill innocent British women and children like the terrorists do today.

Answer 4

No! they were British subjects so they would be called traitors, or revolutionaries, or rebels. Again Terrorist has come into common use in recent history. Bin Laden [asked to leave both Saudi Arabria and homeland of Yemen] an outcast has commonly been refered to as Terrorist and rightly so.

Answer 5

Not if it is defined correctly. Terrorism is the systematic use or threatened use of violence to intimidate a population or government and thereby effect political, personal, religious, or ideological change. Terrorist attacks are designed to influence the broader society to which those killed, injured, or taken hostage belong.
Our founding fathers did not attempt to rule or secede by fear. they attempted to do it first politically. Then they used force to expel the British from America...with the help of France.
To assume otherwise is merely pushing a flawed, uneducated, view of your perceptions. Terror is very different then freedom.

Answer 6

The British would rightly see them as terrorist or more accurately an insurgent army exactly like Hezbollah is to Lebanon a militia force raised to repel an unwanted political or religious group. In there case Israel and it's allies. For us it was Britain and it's allies and for the same reasons. IE: religious and political differences with Britain. It seems we forget our own history for political propaganda which appeals to our own prejudice.

Answer 7

At the time, and now they're Terrorists to George Dumbya. No doubt, to him they're part of "the axis of evil."

That's why he called the Constitution of the United States of America "just a god*amned piece of paper."

Little things like democracy and liberty and freedom keep getting in the way of mister bush's concept of A Perfekt World.

Answer 8

In a way. They hid behind trees and waited to shoot instead of all marching in line with the band announcing their arrival...terrorist for the time.

They did not hide behind women and children like the coward terrorists of today. They didn't teach their preschool children hate and the desire to die just to kill fanaticism that's taught today in the mid-east.

It's not a fair comparison.

Answer 9

As they say, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist.

In general, I think we toss around that word too lightly, and no on is clear about what exactly it means.

Answer 10

No, they were revolutionaries, rebels. They didn't go back to England and blow up women and children to force political change. On top of that the word didn't even exist then.