No, silly is insisting that a word be used in an essentially-useless way.

Yes, because they provide useful information -- there are generalizations you can make and subjects you can discuss about North America(ns) or South America(ns) that apply to them but not to the rest of the world, as opposed to both of them combined.

As I pointed out, the use of America to mean the United States probably came into widespread use outside it before it did so inside it, because for the better part of a century its people primarily thought of themselves in term of what state they lived in, not what country. I'll defer to someone with a better knowledge of linguistic history, but at a guess this is probably because the US was the first European colony to become a separate nation and thus need a special name to denote it.

If you just can't bring yourself to use "Americans" to mean "person who lives in the US", the way everyone else does, use "Yankees" or "Yanks." Just realize that it means something different within the US, and that some folks in the Southern US will take offense.

As others have pointed out in their replies, that's not the case. And even for countries that do have a specific word for US citizens in their language (for instance, Japan or China), when speaking/writing English they use "American" for that.

Can you give me some non-contrived examples in which you'd want to? Is there anything (again, non-contrived) we could discuss that would apply to people in Seattle and Sao Paolo but not to people in Stuttgart and Sydney?

Your statement is akin to insisting that the astrophysics definition of "metal" (everything except hydrogen and helium) should be the preferred meaning instead of the meaning everyone else uses.

Really, it sounds like this is just a proxy for resentment of the US. Maybe that resentment is justified, maybe not, but this seems a pretty silly way to express it.

Point taken, but in that case, their term is more specific and helps distinguish them from a larger group -- the exact opposite of the way you want to use "Americans." And you'll note that they do not call themselves "Africans" despite their islands being geographically part of that continent.

The Republic of India, generally called "India" and whose citizens are generally called "Indians", despite sharing the subcontinent of India with Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. Do you call the citizens of the Republic of India "RoIans"?

Besides which, the idea that it's an "appropriation" is silly. Next to no one uses it that way in everyday conversation or refers to themselves primarily that way, because it doesn't tell you anything useful about them. If I tell you someone is an American in the nationality sense, that lets you make some generalizations about them -- you know he probably speaks English, you know to a degree what kind of food he eats, what TV shows he watches, who the leader of his country is, etc. (Feel free to snark if you wish here). If I use it in the geographic sense, it tells me... what, exactly, besides the tautology that they live on either the North American or South American continent? That they set their clocks between UTC-3 and UTC-11? Heck, just telling me if a person lives north or south of the equator tells me more about where they live than saying that they live in the Americas.

In short, when a word has multiple meanings, people naturally gravitate towards the meaning that's most useful. Referring to someone as an American in the sense you want to use it is only slightly more useful than telling me they're a Terran.

It's used that way in plenty of other countries, including Canadians, who would have as much right to be annoyed by the supposed "appropriation" as anyone else. My impression is that they're proud of their demonym and have no great yearning to lump themselves in with a couple dozen other countries by calling themselves "Americans."

Furthermore, at a guess I'd expect that "American" in the nationality sense came into common man-on-the-street usage (as opposed to political tracts or whatnot) outside the US before it did so inside it, because for the first 75 years -- prior to the US Civil War -- most people here tended to designate themselves and others by their state rather than national identity. They didn't primarily think and speak of themselves as Americans but as Virginians, Vermonters, Ohioans, Kentuckians, etc.

Democrats are just as willing to use that canard, they just use it to support violation of different rights than Republicans do. For example, this, or just as a general magic phrase to demand access to your wallet.

As with many words, it has more than one meaning, depending on the subject you're discussing. When you're talking about nationality -- which was clearly the case -- "Americans" means people who live in the United States. If you're talking about geography, it means people who live in either North or South America. Since there are far more topics of discussion that apply to everybody in the US than apply to everybody living on both continents (time zones, maybe? plate tectonics?), the former is used.

That's not just an American thing. Most people think of their location in terms of political entities rather than geography. Perhaps you should go to a pub in Ireland and tell them that they're British, since they live in the British Isles. The results might be amusing. That goes for smaller political entities as well, unless there's some well-known landmark that locals refer to. If you ask me where I live, I'm going to answer "Las Vegas, Nevada" not "at the base of the Spring Mountains range, in the Mojave Desert."

If that was Senator Gournac's objection -- "maybe it's cheaper but it's too risky" -- it would be entirely reasonable, assuming reality backed him up. But I'm assuming Airbus was considering SpaceX based on objective cost/benefit/risk considerations, and Gournac was effectively saying "Airbus should use Ariane because it's European, even if the cold hard facts say using SpaceX is the better option." And that's crap. Airbus should do what's best for Airbus and Airbus' stockholders.

And yes, if Boeing was considering launching a satellite using Ariane, and a US senator threw a fit, I'd say exactly the same thing.

I predict at least one South Korean cavalry division mounted on war-mammoths.

Racism is a belief (note the ism). Whether or not it exists is based on what individuals think -- in the case of racism, thinking that the goodness/badness or other attributes of an individual are defined by their race. A system cannot hold a belief, therefore there can be no such thing as "systemic" racism. Bad results can be caused by racism, but they cannot themselves be racism. Otherwise, a meteor striking a mostly-black-populated neighborhood would be "racist."

To give a flips-side illustration, consider Don Sterling, owner of the LA Clippers team, who was in the news a while back when he made racist slurs. Despite there being no negative impact (there were lots of black players on the Clippers, earning lots of money), he was still a racist, because of his beliefs.

Yes, they did. They just used different language, calling it "social deviationism" or such, instead of "sinful." What happend to Yevgeny Kharitonov is one example.

I agree that it would be a problem, but so would taking out a large loan to get a philosophy degree. It's a recursive major -- the only significant demand for a degree in it, is to teach it. I'm not saying that philosophy isn't something people should learn (they should), or that you can't get a non-teaching job with a philosophy degree (I know someone with such a degree who works in software), but you're not going to go through the job listings and see "philosophy degree" as a job requirement unless the title is "philosophy professor." If that's your dream, go for it -- but do so with eyes open, and have a backup plan.

Incidentally, back in my senior year of HS, when everyone was going over the university course catalogs and deciding on majors, the thing that drew people to a philosophy and similar majors was the low number of fixed-course units. That is, there were only 35-something units worth of courses that you had to take, out of 120 units or so to get a degree, whereas for a CS degree there were 90+ if memory serves. I heard a lot of variations on, "Wow, for 3/4 of the classes I can take whatever the hell I want!"

There is no such thing as below (or above) market wages. What their skills can earn them in the market is their market wage, which varies with the particular combination of parties and circumstances. They may be earning below average, or below what they'd like to earn, but those are different things.

The parents aren't subsidizing the companies, they're subsidizing their offspring. You're independent of your parents once your skill set is valuable enough -- said value determines by the marketplace -- to sustain you without their help, not once you reach a certain arbitrary age.

And next... Pong!

I did not say that "why" does not matter at all. I said that if you have the right to do X, you can do so for whatever reason you want. Killing someone is something you normally do not have the right to do, but the law makes exceptions under certain extraordinary circumstances. That is, motive can make something permissible that otherwise would be forbidden, but it cannot (per natural rights, not necessarily per the legal system) make something forbidden which is permissible. I have the right to drive people around in my car, or let them sleep in my house, or eat my food, etc. I can exercise those rights, or refrain from exercising them, for any reason I want, or for no reason at all. I do not have the right to shoot someone, or break into their house, or physically restrain them, but the law may decide that I am justified in doing so in rare situations.

Much as I detest taxation, that's a separate issue -- "you can do X but not in exchange for money" vs. "you can do X, but if you get money for it, we'll be taking some of that money." Though in the case of the IRS, they'll be looking to tax you even if money didn't change hands. If you drive your co-worker to work and he buys you coffee in thanks, the price of that coffee is income as far as the tax man is concerned.