What’s all the fuss about Kony – what’s the wests agendahere? What about Uganda’s current president Yoweri Museveni? A leader lauded by the West as partof a new generation of African leaders, why then has this western backedmodernizer not been arrested for war crimes? Why indeed. Under his Presidency, Uganda invaded and occupiedThe Congo. The Second Congo War has resulted in an estimated 5.4 million deathssince 1998 and not forgetting also the deaths from the many other Ugandan backedskirmishes across East Africa’s Great Lakes region.
And it’s not just in africa; in some cases, it's right up there with Heart disease and Cancer, Governments kill (and that's not in Wikipedia).
In 1900, when the 20th century was about to begin,practically all political commentators, social analysts, and newspapereditorialists were sure that the new century would bring greater economicprosperity, more personal liberty and human freedom, and fewer wars andconflicts around the world. Democratic and constitutional government, politicaland economic liberalism, and the rule of law in both domestic and internationalaffairs were the legacy of the 19th century. Unfortunately, the era of classicalliberalism, we now know, was at its end. The era of collectivism and thesocialist-interventionist-“redistributive” state was arriving.
In 1900, the British were fighting the Boers in South Africa(and introducing the first modern use of concentration camps). The AmericanArmy was brutally subjugating the Philippine Islanders to U. S. rule in theaftermath of the Spanish-American War (during which American forces behaved soviolently that all news dispatches back to the States were either heavilycensored or banned). And an international force of American, British, German,Austrian, French, Italian, and Japanese forces were crushing the BoxerRebellion around Peking, China (indiscriminately killing perhaps as many as25,000 Chinese in the process). Nevertheless, even though the century beganwith these conflicts around the world, seemingly no one imagined or predictedthe degree of violence, mass murder, and totalitarian tyranny that has been experiencedduring the past ten decades. Only a handful of older classical liberals werewarning of the dangers that would arise if socialism and collectivism weretriumphant.
How many people, in fact, have been killed by governmentviolence in the 20th century? Not deaths in wars and civil wars among militarycombatants, but mass murder of civilians and innocent victims with either theapproval or planning of governments — the intentional killings of their ownsubjects and citizens or people under their political control? The answer is:169,198,000. If the deaths of military combatants are added to this figure,governments have killed 203,000,000 in the 20th century.
The mega murdering states of the 20th century have been: theU.S.S.R. (1917-1987), 61,911,000; Communist China (1949-1987), 35,236,000; NaziGermany (1933-1945), 20,946,000; and Nationalist (or Kuomintang) China(1928-1949), 10,076,000. These are followed by the "lesser" megamurdering states: Japan (1936-1945), 5,964,000; Cambodia (1975-1979),2,035,000; Turkey (1909-1918), 1,883,000; Vietnam (1945-1987), 1,678,000; NorthKorea (1948-1987), 1,663,000; Poland (1945-1948), 1,585,000; Pakistan(1958-1987), 1,503,000; Mexico (1900-1920), 1,417,000; Yugoslavia (1944-1987),1,072,000; Czarist Russia (1900-1917), 1,066,000.
While the Soviet Union and Communist China have been thesuper mass-murdering states of the century, they have not been the mostlethally dangerous, relative to the populations over which they have ruled.During the 70-year period of Soviet history, the state killed the equivalent of29.64 per cent of the U.S.S.R.'s population, while the Communist Chinese(because of the vastness of China's population) only killed, during the 38years in his study, the equivalent of 4.49 per cent of the people of China. Between1933-1945, the Nazis killed about 6.46 per cent of the peoples under theircontrol in Europe. During the short four years of its rule in Cambodia, PolPot's Khmer Rouge government killed about 31.25 per cent of the entireCambodian population.
What has motivated governments and their followers andagents to commit murder on this scale against tens of millions of innocent, usuallyunarmed, victims — men, women and children, young and old? The leadingmotivations have been ideology (the making of a new socialist man), race (thepurifying of or domination by a "superior" racial group), wealth(plundering the most prosperous for the benefit of a select group), or plaincruelty (the imposing of fear and terror to gain control over and obediencefrom others).
Power kills; absolute Power kills absolutely. . . . The morepower a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whimsand desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murderits foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power ofgovernments, the more power is diffused, checked, and balanced, the less itwill aggress on others and commit democide.
As the arbitrary power of a regime increases, as we movefrom democratic through authoritarian to totalitarian regimes, the amount ofkilling jumps by huge multiples. . . . The empirical and theoretical conclusionis this: The way to end war and virtually eliminate democide appears to bethrough restricting and checking Power, i.e., through fostering democraticfreedom, “which means individual liberty; limited constitutional government andsocial tolerance of difference and diversity among the people in a society. The“Tolerance of difference and diversity” as pushed by the Cultural Marxists ofwestern governments is moot. Tolerance toward smokers, fat people, the alcoholand drug takers are just as important as those of race, religion and sexuality.
As we are slide down the slippery slope to totalitarianism, as we move to toward "Global Governance" expect more crimes, more tragedies and more killings - and somehow, I suspect itwon’t be “the terrorists” doing the majority of it!
