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"The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the more power is diffused, checked and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide. ... In total, during the first eighty-eight years of this century, almost 170 million men, women, and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens and foreigners. The dead could conceivably be nearly 360 million people. It is as though our species has been devastated by a modern Black Plague. And indeed it has, but a plague of Power, not of germs."
 By: | Rudolph J. Rummel (more quotes by Rudolph J. Rummel or books by/about Rudolph J. Rummel) |
| (1932-2014) Professor of political science, University of Hawaii |
Source: | Death by Government (Transaction Press 1994). Dr. Rummel coined the term democide to refer to the many and regular genocides and mass murders committed by governments. |
Categories: | Government, Militarism, Police, Power |
Rating: |   |