How do you confuse mob vengeance (Tarring and Feathering) with Terrorism? Go back and read the first paragraph of the first search result you linked to. A mob cannot by definition is not a group engage in organized pre-planned behavior. No more terrorism than a couple bullies impulsively beating up another kid at school for making them angry.

...Unless your definition of "Terrorism" is "anything that scares people", which would encompass all violence and all threats of violence between people. Although there are differences of opinion on the details, there is a consensus as defining Terrorism as a type of asymmetric warfare, itself a subset of warfare, which is then a subset of violence. Your posts seem to indicate you think "Terrorism" is any type of violence.

Non-combatants targeting non-combatants alone show your examples don't understand what "Terrorism" is.

Perhaps you were shocked by the environment you grew up in, but that neither indicates that most (or even many) of the Loyalists in the colonies left due to the Patriots using terrorism as a war tactic against the British or anyone else (because its abundantly obvious they didn't). If I were a Loyalist displaced by the Revolutionary war I'd be pretty pissed too...

Anger != Evidence of Terrorism

here you go:

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2544578&cid=38172728

:)

I'm going to gently point out that your link for "terrorized" points to a page for North Carolina Hotels and Tourism, with all of a single entry ("The militia terrorized loyalist communities. The British got blamed for all the trouble of that day, whether they were guilty or not") relating to terrorism (and in the context doesn't indicate terrorism in the Asymmetric Warfare sense) and your link for "most of them fled to Canada" goes to a Wikipedia article which says that only 10 - 15% left.

I'm sure the colonies were an unpleasant place to be a Loyalist in the midst of a war for independence and I can understand why some would move to an area where Great Britain was still clearly in charge but nothing you've linked to actually seems to offer evidence indicating that terrorism was the strategy of the Patriots.

Nope Mr. Anonymous, I don't think that the definition of Guerrilla Warfare vs. Terrorism revolves around the economy of the participants. What did I write that made you think that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Malcolm_(Loyalist)

Wikipedia could be secretly infiltrated by Patriots, sneakily and subtly editing Wikipedia articles to paint all Loyalists in the worst light possible; beyond that possibility in both cases where John Malcolm was tarred and feathered it sounds like he had been found guilty by a mob of "acting like a complete and utter douche beyond acceptable societal norms". Incidentally, the second time he got tarred and feathered it was for knocking out the guy trying to stop him from beating up a kid. Swell guy there.

Mob Justice != Terrorism

The parties acting during the Revolutionary War were many things, despite the current "everything == terrorism" fad I don't think that term can accurately be retroactively applied to the revolutionaries on either side. It was a war, fought with conventional methods on one side and guerrilla tactics on the other. There was no strategy of attacks on non-combatants from either side as being the method to get the surrender of the other. The strategy of both sides was to reduce the effectiveness of the other military until one or the other gave up the will to fight.

Sounds more like good guerrilla warfare than terrorism to me. If the supply lines of your much larger enemy have a chokepoint (as it was during the Revolutionary War; the enemy depended on naval transport for everything) that's exactly what you want to target, mainly for the material and personnel effect (the latter assuming most of the people working in the shipyard accepting British transport were on the side of the enemy). Psychological effects at most are a tertiary bonus, if you were lucky...blowing up a dock in the Revolutionary War would be a really inefficient way to instill enough fear in the public of Great Britain to change public support of a war.

Modern examples of the difference:
Terrorism: Flying jetliners into buildings in a way sure to get good media coverage and keeping the threat of the possibility of it happening again ambiguous.
Guerrilla tactics: Attacking supply lines of your enemy in Afghanistan, rather then wasting your personnel in a head-on attacks against a much stronger enemy.

Guerrilla warfare != Terrorism

Huh? No mention of nanny state from me, maybe you got me confused with the many other replies to your comment.

One way power relationship != Nanny State

I hope you don't consider the relationship of a 4 year old to a parent a good metaphor for your relationship with your government.

Unless you're in North Korea, then of course that makes sense.

Not enough data for a reasonably intelligent prediction.

-Are these 1,000 who self-assess as "reasonably intelligent", or are these 1,000 who somehow actually are selected to be reasonably intelligent?

visions of urban gang members reduced to tagging pine trees...

90% of the response for handling global warming will look different depending on if the climate change we're observing turns out to be artificial or natural. I think the OP wasn't saying that we shouldn't plan, rather than we should confirm the cause before rushing into (possibly useless or worse) action.

while burning much more fuel. Higher peak power per liter of displacement isn't the same as efficiency. A jet turbine gives far more HP compared to a rotary at a fraction of the displacement as well, doesn't make it necessarily more efficient.

If you want maximum efficiency in converting chemical energy into kinetic energy, Sterling engines are the top of the heap (with terrible power:mass or power:volume ratios). If you want maximum power to weight you want a rocket engine.

Rotary (and piston) engines are buried somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.