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Rummel, R. J. Item #: c5549 Product Type: Paperback “The case for human liberty and limited government has never been made more effectively than by this fearsome book.” – DOUG BANDOW, the Cato Institute When you hear the term “mass murderer,” who comes to mind? Ted Bundy? Jack the Ripper? After eight years of research, this distinguished political scientist reveals the horrible truth: Government is the greatest megamurderer in history. R.J. Rummel’s book gives one more reason to maintain a healthy suspicion of the long arm of government. As The Cato Institute’s Doug Bandow remarks (in his review that is nothing short of glowing): “The line, ‘I’m from government and I’m here to help you,’ takes on new meaning after reading R.J. Rummel’s devastating Death by Government. This century, estimates the University of Hawaii political scientist, the State has killed almost 170 million people. “The numbers are so horrifying, so unfathomable, so unbelievable--it is tempting to dismiss them as meaningless statistics. But consider: this century politicians have killed, for matters of ideology and policy, the equivalent of the entire population of Russia. With the slaughter averaging roughly 1.8 million people a year, in effect every resident of Houston or Philadelphia has been buried year in and year out. “Rummel calls these murders ‘democide’ rather than ‘genocide,’ because the latter focuses on the elimination of specific ethnic groups, while the former includes mass killings for any number of other reasons. He readily acknowledges the difficulty in developing an accurate death toll, but no one has done better: Rummel offers 72 pages of references. The basic problem, he explains, is power....Of course, this problem is not new. Rummel estimates that some 133 million people were murdered over the first several thousand years of human life. China’s emperors were particularly brutal, killing 33.5 million; the Mongols ran a close second at 30 million. “While the State long ago demonstrated its democidal nature, the political experiment has, unfortunately, taken a much deadlier turn this century. Indeed, the twentieth century demonstrates the utterly disastrous results of what historian Paul Johnson calls the Age of Politics. Unique to this century has been the marriage of sinful men, all-powerful governments, and technological progress. As a result, 20 death states have killed 170 million human beings.” Rummel proves arbitrary power massacres the helpless people it controls. This century’s bloodiest megamurderers -- among them Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Adolf Hitler and Chiang Kai-shek -- demonstrate that power kills, and absolute power kills absolutely. But where freedom reigns, violence is constrained. Rummel explains why the best course of action to stop government killings is the pursuit of freedom: The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the more power is diffused, checked, and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide. At the extremes of power, totalitarian communist governments slaughter their people by the tens of millions; in contrast, many democracies can barely bring themselves to execute even serial murderers...[W]here absolute Power exists, interests become polarized, a culture of violence develops, and war and democide follow. In this century alone, by current count, absolute--totalitarian--Power has murdered nearly 138 million people...Over 14 million more of the subjects of totalitarian states have died from battles in wars waged by their own regime. Where, on the other hand, Power is limited and accountable, interests are cross-pressured, and a culture of non-violence develops, no wars have occurred and comparatively few citizens have been murdered by the governing elite--even most of those killed is questionable. About 90 percent of the citizens killed by democracies have been killed by marginally democratic Spain (during its 1936-39 civil war), India, and Peru (during its struggle against the communist Shining Path guerrillas). The greatest system of mass murder belongs to the Soviet Union. Rummel writes that some 62 million “old and young, healthy and sick, men and women, even infants and the infirm were killed in cold blood.” What makes this slaughter particularly mystifying is the fact that most of these victims were, as Rummel puts it, “guilty of nothing.” Under Joseph Stalin’s persecutions, there was genocide, such as the slaughter of the Don Cossacks, Ukrainian peasants, and Estonians. There were the mass purges of the Communist Party. And there were killings to fulfill quotas. Rummel explains: “murder and arrest quotas did not work well. Where to find ‘enemies of the people’ they were to shoot was a particularly acute problem for the local NKVD, which had been diligent in uncovering ‘plots.’ They had to resort to shooting those arrested for the most minor civil crimes, those previously arrested and released, and even mothers and wives who appeared at NKVD headquarters for information about their arrested loved ones.” As Bandow remarks, “who can doubt that this was, as Ronald Reagan opined, an evil empire?” Some of what you’ll discover in Rummel’s compelling study: Solid proof documenting the horrifying and unfathomable death tolls Why this book is must reading in history classes not just across America, but around the world More than 8,200 estimates from 1,000 sources to document findings Historical sketches of the four regimes that have committed the most democide -- one million or more people Why, among states where power is limited and accountable, democide does not occur “An unrivaled magnum opus with dozens of tables, figures, copious notes, and a massive bibliography. Essential reading for historians, political scientists, and readers interested in genocide.” --R.H. Dekmejian, University of Southern California |