The horror!

What? Terrorists anger you, you say? How extraordinary!

We need to stop being so civil and start making examples of these terrorists. I'm not saying stoop to their level of torture, beheading, etc; but quit being so easy on them and treating them equally. They are people who would kill you if they had the chance for crap sakes!

Keep them in isolation in a dark room and only give them bread and water. They don't need nice food and they don't deserve medical treatment if they are sick.

At that day and age, with the techonology available how do you propose that some civilians go and kill some other civilians on a larger scale than one by one? I don't think you realize that that stuff was just not physcailly possible to pull off. They had to do what they could. Going by the amount of weight people gave dignity and honor, tarring and feather on the other hand has a hell of a lot mre meaning. You can't just look at acts and put them in contect in today's times, you need to look at them at their respective times. What the colonialists did was terrorism, plain and simple, for their time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_Plot

1605

This happened 150+ years before the colonists tarred and feathered anybody. Doesn't matter how you look at it tar n feather isn't terrorism today and wasn't terrorism then.

No... they were against it.

In fact, John Adams represented the British Soldiers after the Boston Massacre. 

Well Sameual Adams liked that kind of stuff, but he was basically the only person... and he was generally shunned by the actual real important people.

It's also funny Vlad apparently doesn't think the Boston Teaparty, tarring and feathering and Revolutionary war tactics were taught in school.

I mean, you kinda need to know that stuff to learn about the revolutionary war.  Your average gradeschooler knows that stuff and has to know it to pass history. (Though likely forgets it later)

Another thing taught in school.  American Civil War tactics were crap.  They used them because it's what the local miltias used vs the Indians with their rifles.

They didn't switch tactics because "they started winning".  They switched tactics because it took them time to teach men to not break ranks when forming a musket line.

American tactics were fairly useless unless you used rifles which were

A) In short supply. 

B) Really only good for skirmishes.

With Smoothbore muskets... those tactics proved ineffecutal.

A) What pyro bill said.

B) Who said it had to be more then one by one?  Killing a person would instill a lot more terror then something tamer then most corporal punishment used during that era... such as say, branding peoples thumbs.

You are comparing the murder of civilians with, really tame forms of corporal punishment... that didn't hurt people... and proprerty desctruction.  That was offered to be paid for.

C)  These were large masses of 300+ people.  If they really wanted to do damage... they could have.

You can't really stop terrorism, not entirely.

The only two ways to shut it down completely would be:

1) Kill every current and potential terrorist on the planet

2) Remove any and all reasons for terrorism from their respective hotbeds.

Only 2) is somewhat viable, and even that is borderline impossible to do globally since some people will always find excuses to take out their anger on their perceived enemies.

As for the current discussion: The primary goal of terrorism is to paralyze or otherwise influence the target(s) thru fear. While a bodycount has a potent terror effect on people, it's hardly necessary to kill people to achieve this effect. The Reichstag fire and its use by the Nazi party is a good example of this.

Or for a hypothetical example - the destruction of the White House would be a powerful symbol to anyone, even if nobody dies in the attack.

On the contrary, terrorists have killed very nearly that many in Iraq alone, given the vast majority of those one million civilians dies in terrorist bombings...

The mild things done by the colonists at the time would hardly count though.