Democide: death by government design

I will ask your forgiveness right now for the photo used to illustrate this post. It is difficult for me to view, and may offend some readers. It does show a victim of death by government, deaths that happened here in our own country in the recent past. It is of a victim, a child, of a fire caused by the FBI at Waco, Texas.

I stumbled across an article wherein a blogger listed deaths directly attributable to governmental action, as opposed to the actual murder of a country's people by bullet, rope, poison gas (Iraq), etc. An example of such is the Holodomor, the intentional starvation by Stalin of millions of "kulaks" in the Ukraine back in 1932-33.

[Do not be confused by the chart on the right. Each of the totals need to be multiplied by 1000 to reflect the actual numbers of dead.]

Genocide is a slippery word, currently being twisted and abused by the Left to describe any killings they do not approve of, but ignored when it suits their agenda to ignore it (like the hundreds of thousands who died in Darfur, to little protest from the Left. Far more than have been killed in Syria, Libya, "Palestine", Iraq and Afghanistan). It used to apply to deliberate attempts to eradicate an entire race or culture or nation.

This blogger defines "democide" as the deliberate killing of people by governmental action, whether it is by enforced starvation, as occurred in both Russia and China, or by gas and firing squads in Germany. It is a more accurate - and less debatable - accounting than genocide, so that attempts to control the populace by killing large numbers isn't ignored for not being actual "genocide".

We have all been aware of the Holocaust and the deaths caused by Hitler and the National Socialists of pre-and-WWII Germany. There was indeed genocide, but quite a few of the deaths caused by these fiends were not actually genocide, however they do fit the definition of "democide". As shocking and disgusting as the Holocaust was in its intent to obliterate an entire race, religion, and culture, it pales next to the deaths Stalin and Mao caused in their respective countries.

Most people accept the approximate figure of 6 million killed during the Holocaust. Close approximations of the deaths directly caused by Stalin approach 72 million, according to articles I have read (62 million in the above article). The deaths attributable to Mao Tse Tung were in the neighborhood of 100 million (78 million in the above article). About twelve and fifteen times those killed during the horror we know of as the Holocaust.

This is not meant to belittle the Holocaust or reduce its significance in the least. It is meant to point out - especially to anyone taught the ridiculous pack of lies we all have been taught in our public schools - that our educational system has ignored the effect of Communism on the lives of over 150 million people just in the 20th Century.

If you have any school-aged children, take a peek at their history books, their social study books. See if you can find any reference to these deaths, these murders by government design, in any of the books your children are taught from in the public schools. I guarantee you that you won't, except for - perhaps - a brief reference to the Holocaust.

Our public school system, as well as the training in teacher's programs throughout the country, has been slowly but surely been moved in the direction of teaching our children the "benefits" of socialism. When members of this administration speak to our school children of Mao Tse-tung being their "favorite philosopher", we can see how far the rot has spread.

We here in this country are pikers compared to Germany, Russia and China, not to mention the many killed in Armenia, Cambodia, and elsewhere. But we are not blameless, either. The approximately 650,000 killed during what is called the Civil War is actually democide. We were taught - as I have written about previously - that it was all about freeing the slaves, but it was not. It was about preventing the Southern states from seceding, leaving the Union and forming their own government. Slavery - which had actually been coming to an end on its own, due to economic forces in play at that time - was merely the "hot button", the spin used by the Lincoln administration to drive the North into a fervor for war against the people of our own country. Lincoln himself was in favor of allowing slavery to continue in most of the country, arguing only that it shouldn't be permitted in the new territories opening in the West and Northwest. Indeed, he attempted to talk black leaders of his time into moving all blacks, slave and freed, to the newly forming African country Liberia.

Waco was another small "blip" in the democide practiced by our government. It passed nearly unnoticed by most Americans, as "only" 70+ men, women, small children and infants were burned to death by the actions of the FBI at that debacle. As has been attributed to Stalin, the death of one person is a tragedy. The death of millions is only a statistic. Compared to the 150 million killed elsewhere in the world during the 20th Century, 70 or so Americans is "nothing" - unless you were one of those 70. Unless you were someone who loved and cherished those 70.

This is not meant to be a diatribe against our government for those the FBI murdered at Waco. It is meant simply to show that our country is as guilty of democide as Russia or China. The scale is certainly different, but that does not excuse it. Indeed, because we are meant to be a Constitutional Republic (not a democracy, where the vote of the majority is allowed to overrule the rights of an individual), we should be judged more harshly. Our country should not be engaging in any democide, any government-sanctioned killing of our own citizens, especially women and children. What civilized country has a right to kill its women and children? I am not a Christian, not religious at all, but as our country has legalized the killing of millions of fetuses, a belief that a fetus is a human being who simply has not been allowed to be born would begin to put us right up there with Germany, Russia, and China (although their numbers would probably be incredibly higher if we included terminated pregnancies in their countries as well).

Well, there you have it. A new word - at least, new to me - which speaks to how uncivilized we all have been during the 20th Century (and earlier, of course). A word which speaks to the effect of Communism on the human race. A word which should cause us to pause and think whether we really want to allow socialism to progress (as in "Progressives") any further in this country of ours. For the flavor of socialism that is being taught and brought to this country is founded upon Communism, by those who wish to see the Great Experiment of freedom that this country was founded upon exchanged for an experiment to see if Communism - and all those lovers of Marx and Mao - will work in this country. That would indeed be real "Change". But not change that most of us want.