Yesterday I finished reading R. J. Rummel's Death by Government. The book is eye-opening as hell, boring as shit, fucking scary, and a damned good survey of twhat the author calls ''democide'', or government sponsered murder. Rummel analyzes all the mega-murderers of this century (1900-1987) including Mao, Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek, Hitler, Pol Pot, Tito, the Japanese in the Phillipenes, Turkey's genocidal purges of the Armenians, the Vietnamese and Korean communist regimes, Poland's anti-German purges, Pakistan's genocide in East Pakistan. . .

The main thesis that Rummel argues or is that Powre kills. Concentrade power in the hands of a few (such as you have under communism) and you inevitably get a murderous regime. This is not an apriori fact, rather an empirical finding. Rummel documents all this meticulously.

One shortcoming of the book however is the analysis it offers of the mechanism of how power kills. After all it is the main thesis and it would be nice to see the hows and whys too. Each chapter dedicates about a paragraph to it, and this is worth more time. It would make for a more interesting and valuable book. As it stands, the analysis is simplistic. (Though I do see why Rummel might want to avoid that and just stick to the acts.)

A personal note I want to add is that I am pleased to have not seen anyone who could posibly be an ancestor of mine mentioned in the book (at least not ont he bad list). I have no idea how people live knowing that their genetic heritage accommodates various genocides, and mass murders. Maybe that is why liberals tend to not believe in genetics playing any role in how we are, because their genes are full of violent and crazy tendencies, and they would never want to believe that they might be the way deep down.