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War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: Tyranny, Violence and the State Zen fascists will control you Hundred percent natural You will jog for the master race And always wear the happy face Close your eyes, can’t happen here Big Bro’ on white horse is near The hippies won’t come back you say Mellow out or you will pay - Jello Biafra, California Uber Alles Collectivist ideologies combined with the technology of motorized transportation and electronic communication made possible the greatest mass-slaughters in human history. The reason collectivist ideologies inherenty imply mass-murder is because they hand all power over to the state, i.e., man is made naked before the state. Whereas liberty is predicated upon decentralization of power, whereby each man (or woman) is his own master, lest he violate another man’s right of the same. As I relisten to [Steven] Pinker now, he’s quite wrong on a major point. It’s quite true that *voluntary society* has grown since ancient times, yet the 20th century was by far the most murderous century in history. So in one aspect mankind has grown — in the sense that mankind holds more to the idea of concern for others. But in other aspects mankind finds it easier to slaughter even their own countrymen, due to their having been propagandized that these slaughtered people are their enemies and are a threat to them. In Pinker’s talk, he doesn’t seem to address the mass-slaughters of the 20th century. Pehaps he did and I just missed it. If he did, he must have passed over it quickly. As I was relistening to his TED talk as I write this, I missed any part where he got into the statistics and details of the 20th century’s mass-slaughters. I agree with the general thrust of his idea, i.e., that mankind is becoming more conscious to others’ suffering. But this alone exludes a lot of other factors that can be involved in mass-murders. After all, the Communists took the mantle of power with the idea of taking care of everyone, and yet they were [the] most murderous societies that have ever existed. So there is obviously far more that is relevant than mere surface-level concern for others. The great liberals of the Enlightenment, going into the 19th and 20th centuries, said that the most important factor concerning the organization of society was individual liberty. And as I’ve already indicated, I must agree with their analysis. They indeed had it right. The reason quite simply is because it comes down to a matter of ownership. Who owns one’s life? Either the individual does, or others do. If others do, then this automatically implies mass-slaughter, for then individuals are nothing more than heads of cattle. More than six times the amount of noncombatants have been systematically murdered for purely ideological reasons by their own governments within the past century than were killed in that same time-span from wars. From 1900 to 1923, various Turkish regimes murdered from 3.5 million to over 4.3 million of its own Armenians, Greeks, Nestorians, and other Christians. The Soviet government murdered over 61 million of its own noncombatant subjects. The communist Chinese government murdered over 76 million of it own subjects. The National Socialist German government murdered some 16 million of it own subjects. And that’s only a sampling of governments mass-murdering their own noncombatant subjects within the past century. (The preceding figures are from Prof. Rudolph Joseph Rummel’s University of Hawaii website at http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/ .) All totaled, neither the private-sector crime which government is largely responsible for promoting and causing or even the wars committed by governments upon the subjects of other governments come anywhere close to the crimes government is directly responsible for committing against its own citizens–certainly not in amount of numbers. Without a doubt, the most dangerous presence to ever exist throughout history has always been the people’s very own government. (This is also historically true for the U.S. govermment, as no group has killed more U.S. citizens than the U.S. government. Viz., the Civil War; etc.) The above is my quick analysis on what I heard Pinker say in his TED talk. I agree with the overall idea that he’s getting at, that mankind is becoming more conscious–but this conscientiousness has been manipulated by those who seek *more* power (since they’re already in power, yet they seek much more). It’s a very naïve form of conscientiousness that mankind has obtained, one that is easily manipulatable for the power-elite. As Jello Biafra correctly assessed, tyranny in the modern day comes in the guise of concern, love and protection. Mankind are still babies when it comes to these concepts. Just because they’ve become more open to the idea that concern for others is a good thing doesn’t mean that those in power can’t easily manipulate them into the direct antipode using those very concerns. Again, we’ve seen this exact phenomenon with the Communists, of which regimes were the greatest slaughters ever in history
Poster Comment: We have more to fear from our government than from other governments. Yet the average American votes in the Bushes and Obamas. It's why I stopped believing in democracy years ago.
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#1. To: Turtle (#0)
My children own mine.
#2. To: Prefrontal Vortex (#1)
"You just wait until you have children!!! I hope they treat you just the way you treat me!!!"
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