John wrote:
> At 04:52 PM 5/26/01 +0200 J. van Baardwijk wrote:
> >Stalin (and many other leaders around the world) killed many people
because
> >he was a dictator; communism had nothing to do with that. Hitler killed
> >millions of people because he was a dictator (and he *certainly* wasn't a
> >communist).
>
> I'm not sure that this is true. How many regimes in the past 100 years
> engaged in the systematic killing of millions of its own people?
When you limit it to millions, you're stuck with dictators that *had*
millions of people to execute. There are others that killed and tortured
large numbers of their population also. Thus, we could add below:
> I can think of the following:
> USSR
> Nazi Germany
> PRC
> Khmer Rouge of Cambodia
Uganda
Iraq
Iran (under the Shah)
Iran (as an Islamic Republic)
Syria
Turkey
If you go back more than 100 years, US treatment of native peoples is
certainly nothing to be proud of, although I like to think that we're facing
up to that shameful part of our past as well as can be expected. I'd go so
far as to say that every nation has *something* in its past to be ashamed
of. Some have more than others - it doesn't make all nations morally
equivalent (which no one has explicily argued, to my knowledge), but it
certainly gives every nation's citizens reason to reflect before blindly
accusing others of Evil Empire (TM) status.
> Isn't the fact that Communists took three of the top four slots somewhat
> disturbing? Its not like there has been a shortage of dictators in the
> 20th century for comparison.
Clearly, totalitarian regimes do show considerably higher disregard for the
lives of their citizens than Republics or Democracies. It just happens that
the largest totalitarian philosophy of the last 100 years is Communism.
Adam C. Lipscomb
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
