Posted on 05/26/2005 10:30:32 AM PDT by xzins
As far as religion... it depends which version of the Koran you believe in.
I don't think so.
First, pure religious wars are few and far between. Second, most of the religious wars thought to be so are actually power struggles between kings and kingdoms....and it's always nice to say God is on your side. Third, socialist ideologies have killed so many in the 20th century that it's going to be hard for anyone ever to catch up.
Excellent findings. Thanks.
False dichtomoy: Religion is itself ideology.
(...and furthermore according to a lot of Freepers, non-theistic ideologies are also religions...)
At least 20M civilians died in Russia during the war, not all by any means due to specific Nazi actions. The Reds also killed a many that they thought might be insufficiently supportive, and a great many died during the chaos of that most brutal war.
When I said 12M I was referring to civilians killed specifically in the "holocaust" referenced by the original author.
I've generally used Rummel's numbers:
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
However, I think you understand the distinction that's being made.
The author's point uses something like the following distinction:
1. Religion is an attempt to explain ultimate meaning and destiny.
2. Ideology is a social/political philosophy enforced by governments.
You got it.
Bookmarked!
So what were the other millions of citizens killed by Germany's National Socialism, potted plants?
Even the Communists admit to at least 100 million citizens killed by their Communist masters. I believe that is the number in the book, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression.
And why are environmentalists called watermelons?
National Socialism, international socialism, green on the outside and red on the inside -- I don't have the brightest pixels here but I see a connection between millions of dead citizens and societies that give too much power to government employees to micro manage things.
Abortions since 1973 have averaged 1.5 million dead fetuses per year, haven't they? The math on that (48 million) beats the records of both Stalin and Hitler.
True, but it's hard to seperate the two. For example, most of the Holocust victims didn't die (or fall into Nazi hands) until the actual war started. Does this count the 2 million Soviet POWs the Nazis murdered from 1941-42?
Good point. Government sponsored mayhem & murder.
Add Pol Pot, Vietnam, Romania, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Angola, and East Germany and East Europe (though still far fewer).... Add ALL the current Muslim wars - since the FIRST terrorist camps (the beginnings of the re-fueled hatred against the West and Israel) were the KGB-funded anti-Isreal camps in Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Lebanon.
While I don't like to engage in this sort of relativism, I think it's hard to understate the numbers killed, directly and indirectly, by communists.
That said, whether red, brown or green, a pox on all their houses as far as I'm concerned.
As a former altar boy, this apologia for the Catholic Church by an avowed atheist is amazing.
Great chart! Thanks.
This was no small worry on poultry farms in South Georgia during the '70's.
What gets me is Mao (after WW2)and Stalin (before WW2)
They starved and butchered the working peasant's.
These people KILLED 10's of Millions of their own
followers and were given a pass by the American press.
Hitler killed 20 million in Russia alone...
Actually, you will not find two sources which agree on the number of people (Jews or otherwise) killed in the Holocaust or the number of Soviet casualties in WWII. A lot of folks on the wrong side of things took great pains to destroy the evidence.
For instance, according to the surviving German records, fewer than one hundred thousand people died at Auschwitz. No one else kept records of how many people died there, and the evidence from the site is inconclusive-the camp was dismantled after the war and the remaining burial sites were disrupted or lost (the current Auschwitz site was constructed during the 1960s). The commonly reported "2 million" figure is based on railroad records, not actual body counts. Eyewitnesses confirm that a lot of people died, but nobody really knows how many. Russian casualty figures are even more problematic. The Soviets were known to inflate them or minimize them based on the expediency of the moment.
In summary, the Holocaust killed somewhere between 3.5 and 9 million people, depending who is doing the counting, and who they are counting. Likewise, the Soviets appear to have lost about 20 million people between 1935 and 1945, but once again that number is inconclusive and does not differentiate between the casualties of war, famine or purges. There may also be overlap in these numbers, as many of the victims of the Holocaust came from Soviet lands.
While I posted it primarily because I found the culpibility of the greens (due to DDT bans) to be fascinating, I did think that it favorably presented the Catholic Church....a church of which I am not a part.
Nor did I know that Kenney was an atheist. That is fascinating. I sounds like a total capitulation, then, in that old saw that "more have been killed in the name of God...blah, blah, blah....)
Thanks.
There's a really detailed spreadsheet buried in one of the links on that page. It's a ginormous *.gif that you have to zoom in on to really see.
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