| > cast aspersions on the legitimacy of Finland as a nation-state I don't know where you got that from. Finland is no less legitimate than all the other European countries whose independence movements arose in the 19th century, like Poland or those which emerged from Austro-Hungary. Finland is a fairly typical European nation-state. > a comprehensive lack of familiarity with American history. Ethnicity did not play the same role in the American War of Independence as it did in the 19th-century European independence movements, for the simple reason that that new notion of ethnicity did not arise until the age of Romanticism and the years immediately preceding 1848. > your parochial resentments I don’t share the resentments to which wassenaar10 may allude. I am not saying that he is correct, only that his view is one that exists in the Finnish context. > We are familiar enough with trolls "Troll" has a very specific meaning in internet parlance and is not merely anyone that you think is wrong. |