Posted on 08/25/2007 9:13:47 AM PDT by Exton1
And what do you think communism is based on?
The worst regimes of the 20th century have been atheistic, which is not much different than humanism.
It’s not the political system that’s the problem, it’s the belief system. Humanism/atheism answers to no one but themselves. Anything goes and anything can be justified because there are no outside moral constraints; only those imposed by those in power.
I see your correction. My bad...
I thought George Bush was the greatest killer in recent times...
Not as much as you might think.
The world's greatest authority on the subject, R. J. Rummel, a professor at Univ. of HI, has calculated that governments, more or less in time of peace, murded 262M of their citizens during the 20th century, while about 40M died in wars during the 20th.
whil262http://frankwarner.typepad.com/free_frank_warner/2006/05/dictatorships_d.html
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/PERSONAL.HTM
Not all of these governments were "secular humanist" in nature, but those who were accounted for the vast majority of the deaths.
ping
for the forum’s reference:
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression
by Stéphane Courtois et al.,
Well, not entirely true in any direction. To begin with, religion isn’t really to blame for most of the killing done in its name. That is, usually there are other reasons, but religion is used as both a justification and rationalization of why there is killing.
Of course, there have been many killing that were purely religious in nature, but beyond a certain *scale*, it is almost invariably just used as an excuse for some far more mundane reason, such as ethnic hatred, greed, family and tribal feuds, etc.
So, in turn, the flip side to this is that atheism, while truly responsible for lots of killing, was actually only a part of other, again more mundane, reasons and rationales for war and murder.
The water is muddied further if you compare the two bloodiest conflicts in human history, World War II and the Taiping Rebellion in China (a conflict almost never mentioned in US schools, but with between 20-50 million dead, directly and indirectly, which overlapped the US Civil War).
World War II was actually two war rolled into one, and only the Soviets were to any degree atheist, which even they downplayed during the war, hoping for Russian Orthodox support. And yet, almost everywhere else the war had almost no religious significance at all, except peripherally.
The Taiping Rebellion, however, was started by a charismatic nut-case who fancied himself as Jesus’ messianic younger brother. He got this idea in what had to have been by far the worst blunder ever unintentionally committed, by a Protestant missionary who gave him a religious tract.
However, no sane person would blame Christianity, or even that missionary, for this, in what has to rank as one of the worst simple mistakes in human history.
In the final analysis, I would not blame atheism, either, for that vast majority of murderousness. Instead, blame the philosophy which encompassed it, communism.
That is, while communists did destroy many churches, mosques, and synagogues, and killed many religious people and their religious leaders for being who they were, they killed a LOT more people, not in the name of atheism, but in the name of communism.
Communism didn’t and doesn’t just kill for atheism. It kills for ethnic hatred, economic hatred, political hatred, out of a pure lust for power and desire to steal, tear down and destroy, and yes, also for religion.
Atheism by itself can’t hold a candle to communism for pure blood lust.
The killing machine that is Marxism
By R.J. Rummel - December 15, 2004
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41944
With the fall of the Soviet Union and communist governments in Eastern Europe, too many have the impression that Marxism, the religion of communism, is dead. Hardly. It is alive and well in many countries still, such as North Korea, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, a gaggle of African countries, and in the minds of many South American political leaders. However, of most importance to the future of democracy, communism still pollutes the thinking of a vast multitude of Western academics and intellectuals.
Of all religions, secular and otherwise, that of Marxism has been by far the bloodiest – bloodier than the Catholic Inquisition, the various Catholic crusades, and the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants. In practice, Marxism has meant bloody terrorism, deadly purges, lethal prison camps and murderous forced labor, fatal deportations, man-made famines, extrajudicial executions and fraudulent show trials, outright mass murder and genocide.
In total, Marxist regimes murdered nearly 110 million people from 1917 to 1987. For perspective on this incredible toll, note that all domestic and foreign wars during the 20th century killed around 35 million. That is, when Marxists control states, Marxism is more deadly then all the wars of the 20th century, including World Wars I and II, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
And what did Marxism, this greatest of human social experiments, achieve for its poor citizens, at this most bloody cost in lives? Nothing positive. It left in its wake an economic, environmental, social and cultural disaster.
The Khmer Rouge – (Cambodian communists) who ruled Cambodia for four years – provide insight into why Marxists believed it necessary and moral to massacre so many of their fellow humans. Their Marxism was married to absolute power. They believed without a shred of doubt that they knew the truth, that they would bring about the greatest human welfare and happiness, and that to realize this utopia, they had to mercilessly tear down the old feudal or capitalist order and Buddhist culture, and then totally rebuild a communist society. Nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of this achievement. Government – the Communist Party – was above any law. All other institutions, religions, cultural norms, traditions and sentiments were expendable.
The Marxists saw the construction of this utopia as a war on poverty, exploitation, imperialism and inequality – and, as in a real war, noncombatants would unfortunately get caught in the battle. There would be necessary enemy casualties: the clergy, bourgeoisie, capitalists, “wreckers,” intellectuals, counterrevolutionaries, rightists, tyrants, the rich and landlords. As in a war, millions might die, but these deaths would be justified by the end, as in the defeat of Hitler in World War II. To the ruling Marxists, the goal of a communist utopia was enough to justify all the deaths.
The irony is that in practice, even after decades of total control, Marxism did not improve the lot of the average person, but usually made living conditions worse than before the revolution. It is not by chance that the world’s greatest famines have happened within the Soviet Union (about 5 million dead from 1921-23 and 7 million from 1932-3, including 2 million outside Ukraine) and communist China (about 30 million dead from 1959-61). Overall, in the last century almost 55 million people died in various Marxist famines and associated epidemics – a little over 10 million of them were intentionally starved to death, and the rest died as an unintended result of Marxist collectivization and agricultural policies.
What is astonishing is that this “currency” of death by Marxism is not thousands or even hundreds of thousands, but millions of deaths. This is almost incomprehensible – it is as though the whole population of the American New England and Middle Atlantic States, or California and Texas, had been wiped out. And that around 35 million people escaped Marxist countries as refugees was an unequaled vote against Marxist utopian pretensions. Its equivalent would be everyone fleeing California, emptying it of all human beings.
There is a supremely important lesson for human life and welfare to be learned from this horrendous sacrifice to one ideology: No one can be trusted with unlimited power.
The more power a government has to impose the beliefs of an ideological or religious elite, or decree the whims of a dictator, the more likely human lives and welfare will be sacrificed. As a government’s power is more unrestrained, as its power reaches into all corners of culture and society, the more likely it is to kill its own citizens.
As a governing elite has the power to do whatever it wants, whether to satisfy its most personal wishes, or as today’s Marxists desire, to pursue what it believes is right and true, it may do so whatever the cost in lives. Here, power is the necessary condition for mass murder. Once an elite has full authority, other causes and conditions can operate to bring about the immediate genocide, terrorism, massacres or whatever killing the members of an elite feel is warranted. But it is power – unchecked, unconstrained, uncontrolled – that is the killer.
Our academic and intellectual Marxists today are getting a free ride. They get a certain respect because of their words about improving the lot of the worker and the poor, their utopian pretensions. But when empowered, Marxism has failed utterly, as has fascism. Instead of being treated with respect and tolerance, Marxists should be treated as though they wished a deadly plague on all of us.
The next time you come across or are lectured by one of our indigenous Marxists, or almost the equivalent, leftist zealots, ask them how they can justify the murder of over a hundred million their absolutist faith has brought about, and the misery it has created for many hundreds of millions more.
R.J. Rummel, professor emeritus of political science and Nobel Peace Prize finalist, has published 29 books and received numerous awards for his research.
Isn’t it morally wrong to post stuff like this WITHOUT A BARF ALERT??????
What a crock. Doesn’t everybody know that the environmentalist agenda has killed more people in the 20th century than any other group? That figure must be approaching 20 or 30 million. Maybe 2nd to communism but its neck and neck. The annual deaths under communism is nothing compared to the days of Stalin but environmentalism still easily kills a million a year if not 2.
I don’t mean to preach to the quire but this is exactly why the Second Amendment of the US Constitution was put there. Governments who kill their own citizens out right or relinquish the people’s sovereignty and liberty to entities for the purpose of civilian control is obviously enough cause to clean the state house.
Islamists justify their inhumane actions by their "GOD" as did Christians in the past. Humanity, justice, morality does not flow only from a religious spring. That is why those in power have to be vetted to be moral within themselves prior to their rise to power.
When I see what a thin book Christopher Hitchens has written to assert that God is not great, it immediately suggests how ignorant he is. I compare it to the miles of book shelves in the Catholic University library where I went to grad school. There you could find the thoughts of wise men from the ages who had pondered many things in great detail and is a repository of knowledge.
I don’t think that the complete and utter brutality of Marxist regimes throughout the world in the 20th Century up through today, is being taught in public schools.
The PC worldview which is being espoused is that communists were/are “idealists” out to improve the lot of the common man. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
By removing religion from their societies, particularly, Christianity, the totalitarian regimes were stripping their people of their God-given dignity and right to life. The “state” replaced “religion” .
Talk to someone who lived through the Bolshevik Revolution - that’s an eye opener.
With due respect, not the answer. We don't need moral men in power, although they're nice when we occasionally get them. The problem being that power tends to corrupt even the most moral of men.
We need restrictions sufficient to prevent even immoral men from doing too much damage while they are in power. This is the entire idea behind the US Constitution. Which has worked pretty darn well despite its erosion in recent decades.
“i thought george bush was the greatest killer in recent times...”
heil hillary!!!
Ahh, but often it was the truth. Which only made them more dangerous. The potential for evil of a man interested only in gratifying his own ambitions and appetites is limited. That of an idealist sincerely convinced that he is performing a distasteful but necessary task is not. That is why the death toll of even the greatest tyrants of the past pales in comparison with that of the idealistic Nazis and Commies.
Orwell said the most dangerous person in the world is an idealist with a machine gun. He was talking about the commies.
Yet self-styled conservatives often call for unfettering the American government’s power to intrude on the lives of private citizens. Do they believe our government is any less vulnerable to the pitfalls of human nature than any other?
It seems that Communism was the biggest killer of the 20th century and quite possibly Muslim religion will be the biggest killer of the 21st century because I think everything that we read about the violent nature of Islam is only the tip of the iceberg...
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