Monday, January 16, 2017

Death By Government: The Primary Fact of the 20th Century

Death By Government: The Primary Fact of the 20th Century | Intellectual Takeout:
"The late RJ Rummel revealed a daunting truth: Four times the number of persons were murdered by their governments than killed in warfare.

It was in June 1996 that I picked up a book that, for all intents and purposes, changed my life: R.J. Rummel’s Death by Government (Transaction, 1994). 
After purchasing the book, I devoured it on a flight from Houston to Indianapolis. 
Every anti-Communist thought my mother had so rightly drilled into me as a child, every viewing of The Killing Fields (the work of art that inspired my entrance essay for and into the University of Notre Dame), and every Goldwater-esque aspect of my very soul seemed justified by the very existence of Death by Government
All my firms were confirmed.
Through this book, I came to what I regard as an inescapable but not well-accepted idea: state-sponsored murder is and was the primary fact of the twentieth century..."

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