Not to defend the word 'USian', which is horrid, but this issue is not as clear and simple as you make it out to be. The word 'American' has several uses; someone from the USA is only the most common use.

First, what is the adjective (or demonym) for someone from the Americas? These guys decided it was 'American'. Do you have a better answer?

Second, some people disagree on how many continents there are, with some people combining North and South America, or Europe and Asia. I think there's a stronger case for the second pairing, but using 'the Americas' to refer to a single continent is clearly wrong.

Third, what do we call the native people of the Americas? Historically, that word was American, as an analogue to African, Asian, and European. People make do with Native American, Amerindian, and a whole bunch of of other stuff, but its still kind of a mess. I added this one for historical perspective, but to be fair I have never heard anyone use American in this way.

The person you responded too was clearly a chump, but your refusal to aknowledge the ambiguity doesn't make it vanish. Words can carry a variety of meanings, and we depend on the context to make it clear.

When the Americans attacked York it was the capital of Upper Canada (Ontario). US troops set fire to the Parliament buildings, which lead to the British burning the White House in revenge. This attack is the reason Ottawa later became the capital of Canada; it was not as easy for the USA to attack, keeping in mind that a major attack would come by water in the 1800s.

I don't know if shelling was involved or not, but a famous American explorer, Zebulon Pike, was killed when the British troops blew up their own magazine.

Sure, I absolutely am willing to bet that cities bring more economic activity into the province than the rural areas do. The presence of one wealthy exurb does not change that. The fact is that the big cities, Toronto in particular, bring a large benefit to everyone in the province.

Also, the electoral map is misleading for two reasons: one the much larger size of rural, conservative ridings and the winner-takes-all nature of our elections. If you look at the map you sea a mainly blue southern Ontario, large patches of orange in the north, and a few tiny specks of red in certain areas. Remember that its the number of seats that matter in our system, not the surface area of the riding. The cities have many ridings because of their population. The northwest most riding in our province, where Kenora is, is bigger than all of southern Ontario, yet they only elect one MPP. The other thing is that there is a fair number of voters for all parties in every riding, but small tendancies towards Liberal or Convservative have a big impact. Its ridiculous to paint either the cities or the rural areas as politically unified when most winning candidates get less than half the vote.

The cities are vastly more productive than rural areas, so they're already subsidizing the rest of the province. Toronto by itself is responsible for a huge part of the entire country's GDP. Improving public transit for these cities (where an increasingly large number of voters live) seemed like a better use of public money than yet another corporate tax cut, which is why Ontario voted as it did.

I couldn't 't vote Liberal personally, as I felt the party should be punished for its ethical lapses, but I understand why the voters rejected Tim Hudak's glorious right-wing revolution. If the Conservatives remember that this is centrist province and smarten up they will have a chance next time around.

I had not heard of your second site, but I can only imagine in horror. As for small dead animals, yep, they fit my definition to a T. They seem like the kind of folks who would enjoy The Turner Diaries, or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion if their political prejudices were a bit different. These people are always angry because their views are way beyond our mainstream Conservative party, and because there's no younger generation of 'true believers' to replace them. I'm in my 20s so I plan to just wait them out.

I'm sympathetic to the fact self censorship due to accusations of racism, but I don't know what abuses you are referring to.

I don't think its totally impossible, or democracy would never have started anywhere. However, you're right that history is working against the region here.

Do you know any Muslims in real life (ie a first name basis)? I do, and I haven't found them to be any worse or any better than people from other religious groups. The only extreme religious folk I have met and been affected by personally were Christians (I know that's a cliché, but that is my personal experience).

I would like to know where these 'no go' zones are. I live in Ottawa and pretty much feel safe everywhere. I wouldn't believe everything you read in the papers about 'no go' zones, and even if I did it's a stretch to go from 'poor/violent area where social group X live' to 'global conspiracy by everyone in social group X', which is what I meant by Islamophobia. Remember that even in the most crime-ridden or violent areas the majority of people are still law-abiding, and usually are victims of the crime around them.

If you don't believe in a pan-Islamic conspiracy, then fine, I wouldn't call you Islamophobic. Some people do (e.g. see smalldeadanimals.com) which is why we need a word for it.

I actually think that British colonial rule is what set up the US to be a democracy. The revolutionary US population had lived for several generations under a parliamentary democracy, with strong rights and the rule of law. When they declared their independence from Britain they naturally chose to set up a very similar system.

Compare the experiences of former British colonies like the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand with Latin America, Liberia, Algeria, and other former colonies which rebelled against despotic rule.

Actually, its the right word to describe the paranoid world view of cowards who see Muslim invaders in their soup.

In modern usage, sure, people say 'the Americas' because it is less ambiguous. Historically 'America' was the continent, and 'American' meant the native peoples from the continent.

At some point the US took these names for themselves, not unlike how the Boers tried to define themselves as 'Afrikaners' (Africans). The US was just more successful.

As another poster said, calling this type of scenario mob rule is a gross exaggeration, as long as there's no violence involved. Another way to describe what happened to Mozilla CEO (since it seems that's what we're talking about) would be to say that many people pressured Mozilla to get rid of him (freedom of speech), and that Mozilla decided to cut him loose (freedom of association).

There's no way to stop this from happening without cutting into someone's free speech, either the ability of ordinary people to pressure big companies, or for companies to fire people based on bad publicity. You can argue that people should have not *wanted* to have that man fired because of what he did, but then you're telling other people how and what to think.

I'm interested in hearing who you think acted incorrectly in this case (or a similar hypothetical), and how you would prefer they act.

Your summary of the war of 1812 is good. I am a Canadian, and the only thing I would add is to clarify the whole British vs. Canadian issue.

In 1812, the only people in Canada (then British North America) who would think of themselves as Canadian were the French colonists of Lower Canada (now Quebec). The French Canadians were basically the remnants of New France, and the first people to use the name 'Canada' on a map.

The rest of the country (which like the US of the time had not yet expanded west) was split into separate British colonies such as Upper Canada (Ontario), Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, which would later become Canadian provinces. The people in these colonies would have considered themselves British subjects, and possibly members of these colonies.

At this time there wasn't a strong Canadian identity, and in fact this war helped to define Canada. Its similar to how before 1776 'American' meant Native American, and the people who lived in New England probably considered themselves British.

Well, to be honest there was two things going on here: first was my original complaint, then came the trolling.

Your whole problem in this thread is that you don't read people's posts, or understand what they are saying, and then you post a whole bunch of irrelevant, emotional nonsense. I called your first post flamebait, and somehow you took this as my disagreeing with your definition of flamebait. (actually Urban dictionary's defintion, since for all your blather there's remarkably little content to your posts). Actually, my complaint was that I just didn't like your tone and attitude, but all my attempts at pointing this out went right over your head. Once this got started I just felt like goading you for a response for awhile, and you cooperated admirably. If you really understand flaming or trolling as much as you think you do, you would understand the thrill of seeing someone lose their cool on the internet.

Anyways, after awhile I started to feel bad, which is why I have dropped the insults. If you really want to keep going I'm game, but you've essentially just been calling me illogical, delusional, etc, while I insulted you for being socially retarded. There's not really anything to discuss here, so I'm ready to call it a night if you are.

There were 3 replies to your post: mine, a second post which pointed out the irony of your post, and the one that corrected your spelling. I pointed out that no one specifically agreed with you, and you have gone into an unhinged rant arguing the negative of that, which is a logical leap. Either way it was a bad argument for you to bring up as you're essentially arguing by popularity.

I thought this wasn't a school or a lecture. Make up your mind, man.

Clearly you see nothing wrong with your behaviour, so I'm going to stop trying to explain it to you. Manners are neither rational nor irrational, they are a matter of social custom.

You feel the need to keep replying, meaning that either you're enjoying this or you're neurotic. At first I was sort of hoping it was the second one, but now I realize that I've gone too far with this. This will be my last post.

The crazy thing is that you still bit after I admitted I was trolling you...

Well, you're clearly butthurt to be still so worked up about this.

Three people replied to your post and none of them agreed with you. I'm still not clear on how your definition of flamebait differs so greatly from the original post that you had to shout "Holy fuck!" at them. The OP was a disgusting right-wing rant, clearly meant as flamebait.

The rest of your post was also crap.

Ding, ding, ding! You finally get it! The irony of trolling someone who was arrogantly trying to lecture others on the definition of trolling was just too delicious to pass up. I'm laughing at your superior intellect, professor.

Well consider me fairly warned, then, professor.

OK, enough trolling then, if you can seriously explain the following to me I'll promise to be impressed:
a) Why is an ad hominem necessary for a post to be flamebait? You asserted this at one point, but its not in your original point or your links. Its quite possible to incite a response via flaming without specifically attacking someone. This seems to be original point you had, before your posts descended into incoherent blather.
b) Why do you feel it isn't rude to shout 'Wholly fuck!' at people? Is this just the way you were raised? (Also, its 'holy fuck', dumbass.)