If there is one thing school taught me, it is to not believe what I was taught in school.

Did Benjamin Franklin discover electricity? Benjamin Franklin’s famous kite experiment, while largely fabricated anyway, could not have led to the discovery of electricity, because electricity had already been discovered. In fact, experiments with electricity have been conducted as far back as two thousand years ago. The real discovery made was that lightning was a form of electricity.

Did Thomas Edison invent the light bulb? Looking into the subject, one will discover that Edison’s light bulb debuted almost a full decade after a separate patent for the technology was acquired. The result? Edison was taken to court and forced to name the British inventor a partner in his electric company, known today as GE. He was one of many who have made the claim of the inventing the light bulb, but Edison is given full credit today.

Was the automobile invented in America? This one is complicated, as one’s definition of an automobile could either determine it to be a German or a French invention. Either way, no.

It is fairly common knowledge that the story of Christopher Columbus is partly fabricated or embellished. Some say he did not discover America. After all, Native Americans had been here for thousands of years before his arrival. Also, Viking expeditions to North America are proven in maps including parts of Canada, which date back to the early 15th century. The significance, however, and the reason Columbus is attributed with this feat, is that he did truly create an awareness of this new world throughout Europe, an awareness which spawned epic changes, including the eventual founding the United States.

But one objectively wrong element of Columbus’s story which is seldom made clear is the allegation that he pioneered thoughts that the world was round. Afterall, the Spanish monarch would not initially fund his trip, because they believed he would fall off the face of the Earth, literally. Not so. In fact, by this time in history, it was widely known and accepted, scientifically and religiously, that the world was round. This discovery was made in ancient Greece well over a thousand years before Columbus, after all. In fact, navigational techniques used by Columbus and every other explorer of the time were based on the fact that the world was round. The King of Spain did not want to fund Columbus’s endeavor, because Columbus himself had a very skewed perception of the actual spatial principles of Earth. His estimates for the length of voyage needed to reach India were vastly inaccurate, even if a rather large land mass wasn’t blocking the path. But the history books do a 180 on this, instead depicting Columbus as the enlightened one and the rest of the world as in the dark. Another underdog story.

But why? What is to gain from all of these fabrications? For one, much of what is twisted for the text books is for simplicity’s sake. But this cannot be all. Much of what I see is in the name of heroification. These historical figures need not be burdened in modern times by the negative aspects of their lives. At least, this is the judgment of educators.

When I first began learning contradictions to what was being taught in school, my initial reaction was one of slight surprise. Not surprise that these things were not true, but surprise that they were allowed to be taught as though they were.

It is a clear indication of ignorance, not simply that those in charge of the history books allow false information to be circulated, but that people continue to believe these things despite facts.

And with the subject of ignorance, let’s turn our attention to the tea party.
The tea party has been gaining coverage in the news as of late for its stark opposition to the government’s spending policies and their backing from key political figures such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.

Taken from its own website, the mission of the movement are:

The impetus for the Tea Party movement is excessive government spending and taxation. Our mission is to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets.

And they base their title off of the a resistance by colonists, the earliest and greatest of American patriots, in which they destroyed large reserves of British imported tea in a night raid. I can see the parallel. Colonists did not want taxation without representation, a famous colonial slogan. Radically rising taxes on imported British tea drove colonists to act, just as radically rising taxes in modern day are driving Americans to act, ergo the tea party.

Well played metaphor, except this is horribly wrong. There is no question that the Townshend Acts, which created indirect taxes via import tariffs on items such as tea, created conflict between the British government and their colonial subjects. So where is the contradiction?

The Tea Act, enacted in 1773 by British government, greatly reduced taxes on tea imported into the American colonies. These lower prices created competition for colonists who had started to sell tea of their own, in response to the original tax hikes. They were economically threatened, and in response to this economic threat, the colonists boarded a British ship carrying tea in Boston Harbor and destroyed the tea by throwing it into the harbor.

So now what we have is a political movement based upon less taxation and free markets, which likens itself to an illegal raid acting against the lowering of taxes and, essentially, economic competition.

Even if you believe in the principles that this tea party movement supports, you should probably still be too embarrassed to associate yourself with such a nominally contradictory debacle.

Sarah Palin was the keynote speaker at the first ever National Tea Party Convention yesterday. She left the stage with thunderous reception, specifically to the chanting of "Run Sarah, Run!" We'll see what happens next.

Analysts speculate that the Mad Hatter will be Sarah Palin's running mate in the 2012 Presidential election, in light of her recent endorsement from the Hatter's own political party, the tea party.