Idealogues and their justifications......

[HysteryDiagnosis]

This is good stuff....


UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT
AND WAR: VOL. 3:
CONFLICT IN PERSPECTIVE

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/CIP.CHAP4.HTM
The crimes of violence committed for selfish, personal motives are historically insignificant compared to those committed ad majorum glorian Dei, out of a self-sacrificing devotion to flag, a leader, a religious faith or a political conviction. Man has always been prepared not only to kill but also to die for good, bad or completely futile causes. And what can be a more valid proof of the reality of the self-transcending urge than this readiness to die for an ideal?

[Freedom_from_Chains]

1. Governments have always mobilized people to war based on some

ideal or moral value. The Romans perfected the art.

But the fact is governments never go to war based on an ideal or moral principle. They go to war to acquire something that the other guy has.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. Biases, flaws, and errors -- read deeper --

It's a libertarian site, and has a number of built-in biases.

First, notice that it's "Death By Government". Since Rummel (the author) patently follows a political agenda, we can expect significant statistical skew.

WorldNetDaily is linked as a "freedom" resource. The same WorldNetDaily that endorses the military action being taken by the government of the USA, which has already caused nearly one million deaths in that country since 1990. (This statistic is also not part of Rummel's data set.)

Another big omission: I did not see a single dataset reference to the Rwanda Genocide of 1995 (date?). It is mentioned only in the context of omission and Rummel appears to have incorporated it into his more recent book.

Most of the Communist/Totalitarian statistics looked quite high, especially the figure of 42,672,000 killed by Stalin. This is clearly marked as an estimate. More conventional figures put Stalin's kill at 10-20 million. Stalin is still a major demon, but the numbers will have less impact on Rummel's stats.

On closer inspection, I noticed that a large number of authoritarian (Fascist, USA client terror state) regimes were not included in the data sets. There were also a large number of Communist insurgencies represented but very few anti-Communist insurgencies. The statistics for Hideki Tojo's reign of terror in Imperial Japan seemed low; the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews was pegged at 5.2-5.3 million, a million low of the commonly acepted figure of 6.3 million. The cut-off threshhold, usually 1,000,000, also biased the sample, as it misses a lot of smaller, but more numerous, bloodbaths.

The statistical hypotheses are all based on samples taken from 1/1/1900 through 12/31/1999, missing entirely the genocides against the American Indians and African slaves. These numbers are supplied elsewhere (and total 31 million) but are not part of the core study. Again, pre-20th-century genocides appear to be lop-sided, showing 33,519,000 for China's history from the second century BCE to 1900, and underestimating various "Christian" genocides by an order of magnitude.

The outcome of these biases is to "prove" that Communism has been (far) worse than Fascism, a conclusion which supports a major talking point of modern Neo-Conservatives. I believe this idea is errorneous. I maintain that Communists and Anti-Communists are approximately equally as bloody, their kill rates being subject more to limiting physical factors (number of available partisans, armaments, cultural homgeneity) than to ideology.

This is also one of the failings of modern Libertarianism, which is under self-imposed pressure to "scientifically" prove itself correct, including proving that collectivism (sic) and evil go hand-in-hand. Again, this is an erroneous assumption; collectivization may enhance the ability of the engineers of a genocide, but does not cause it.

The data sets also lead to an argument (I believe faulty) against Asia, which supports the anti-Orientalism in Anglo-American conservative thought.

On the other hand, Rummel's work is a daring and ground-breaking study. It will attract a lot of criticism -- as it should -- and spur a lot of research to damp the effects of his biases. But ultimately, his biases are trivial. "Democide", as he calls it, can be defeated with Democracy. Only the peculiarities of his definitions detract from the work. Government isn't the cause, but the tool, of genocide. The elimination of genocide should be paramount.

The studies are flawed, but mark an important beginning. Rummel should be read, but with scrutiny and a critical eye.

--p!