I understand that it is likely my last setence that you are talking about, and while I certainly should have worded it a bit more carefully, to have a mod jump in and then call my point "unsubstantive" reeks of abuse of power. Before you begin to tell me just how unsubstantive it is, let me ask you one question; does the queen of the UK have or not have the power to dissolve the Canadian Parliament?
If yes, Canada cannot be considered an independent nation, and therefor to call it a "vassal state" is appropriate even in the dryest academic sense. Of course it's a controversial opinion, but I'm not aware that the HN rules can be construed to say that you can't post controversial opinions.
It is times like this when I would like to remind people that the rule change on HN was protested by many of us and we were completely ignored... and it was because we knew the mods would start to marginalize people who spoke ugly-truths and then got bandwagon-flagged. Not saying they do it on purpose or have a malicious intent, just that they established a structure that encourages this kind of abuse.
I protest.