I’m posting a response to http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2419/was-andrew-jackson-one-of-the-worlds-most-prolific-mass-murderers, despite its age, because Shodan referenced this article in a recent thread (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10980306&postcount=64), and my search of the boards suggested that this column hadn’t been commented upon; forgive me if I’m wrong. Also, I don’t know how to HTML code so forgive the clumsy links in this post.
But what I came here to say is that Cecil’s column on the death tolls of various regimes seems to cite only one source, Rudolph Rummel. Rummel’s death-tolls have been widely disputed by other academics (and no, I’m not here to make outrageous claims about the Armenian Genocide never happening).
I doubt that anyone here will deny that, historically, Leftists and Rightists both have been responsible for great atrocities, but Rummel’s numbers are heavily influenced by his conservative philosophy. Some educated guy elaborates here: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstats.htm#n.4.
I often consider Cecil’s columns to be something of an end-all-be-all answer, so I was surprised by this one. I mean, obviously Andrew Jackson was no Hitler, but given that these columns are often cited on the boards as truth, I might have expected a bit more balance and research.
You’re no fun, santos. God help me, I LOVE those threads!
Offhand, Matthew White’s criticisms of Rummel sound pretty bogus.
Highest in bogusity is, “…his assertion that citizens of democracies are far less likely to die at the hands of their own governments is not surprising when we remember that not killing huge numbers of your own people is already included in the definition of democracy.” Huh?
Coming is second is White’s claim that “…Rummel lists 218 pretty nasty regimes, but only 142 of these were sovereign states.” White goes on and on about this, so he seems to see it as a strong point. I don’t get it. If the Serbian Bosnian government killed you instead of the “real” Bosnian government, are you fractionally less dead?
In third place is White’s observation that Rummel favors high-end estimates for Leftist regimes and low-end estimates for authoritarian regimes. White implies, without actually claiming (sneaky bastard!), that Rummel favors authoritarians. It is, however, equally likely that apologists for Marxist regimes have padded the low end, while no one is particularly interested in padding the low end for Hitler.
Have not read the original work, only the linked criticism.
yandoodan said:
If I understand the quoted critic (White?), Democracy is “rule by the people”. The people don’t have a strong incentive to have themselves executed in bulk. Whereas autocratic, totalitarian, and other forms of rule by either a single leader or a small group of people do sometimes have incentives to kill their citizens in bulk.
I think this boils down to the critic feeling that Rummel is serving an agenda and thus Rummel points out something obvious and inherent to the classifications as if it is a conclusive result of his research and therefore meaningful. It may or may not be a fair criticism.
Again, this goes back to White criticising Rummel’s agenda. If I read between the lines, White thinks Rummel is trying to support an agenda that “the government that is best is the government that governs least”. Ergo, Rummel takes any kind of group leadership and calls it a “government” to support his notion that “government” is bad. That is a fair criticism. If Rummel’s purpose is to show that government is bad, then it is definitely on point to show that Rummel’s definition includes lawless anarchies as “governments”.
The criticism is not over headcounts, but rather the political arguments over how they are being interpreted.
Perhaps, perhaps not. If so, it would be useful - nee, strongly recommended - if Rummel were to explicitly state that in his methodology. And if that were the case, why lowball the authoritarians instead of picking middle ground there? Again, if Rummel is proposing an agenda that Communism is evil, conservative authoritarian dictatorships are kinda bad, and libertarianism is best, then highballing the leftist numbers while lowballing the conservative dictatorship numbers serves a political agenda. So it’s not so much favoring authoritarians as despising Communists and leftists.
Thanks for the answer, Irishman.
First, Democracy allows the majority to mass-murder the minority, and this has happened enough that no one should be naive on this point.
Second, while I don’t know much about Rummel, it is painfully clear that White has an agenda of his own, and this leads him to pick nits over what’s a “government”. Phooey. If an organization governs you, it’s your government, whether or not it has a seat on the UN. And yes, this includes insurgents that control inhabited territory, but never get to exchange ambassabors with groups on White’s Approved List.
My third point criticizes the idea of averaging estimates. I merely wished to point out that published, scholarly estimates may contain consistent bias across the spectrum, and I tried to give a not-incredible example of how this could occur. Until you can rule out consistent bias, you cannot (as White does) criticize Rummel for not falling in the middle. Instead, you have to actually examine Rummel’s numbers.
I have no doubt that Cecil knows all there is to know about Rummel’s methodology, as Cecil cites him as an expert. If its good enough for Unca Cecil …
Actually the Trail of Tears was under Martin Van Buren, not Jackson. Jackson had been out of office for a year before it started. General Winfield Scott is the real villian here. Jackson gets the negative press as he did come up with the Treaty that was the basis of the Trail. And also because frankly, Jackson is considered a great man and a famous president by many, whilst MvB is obscure.
yandoodan said:
First, I’m not ready to concede that any group that exerts control over you is your government. Second, what counts and does not count as government seems to me to depend on what you mean by government, and what your purpose is. I think it is entirely fair for White to point out that Rummel may be playing fast and loose with the definition of government to serve his own agenda. Whether or not White has an agenda, I cannot say.
Certainly one needs to examine why the numbers were chosen. Certainly there may be reasons why one group of numbers could be typically exaggerated and another group of numbers be typically under-estimated. But if one is doing so, one needs to explicitly state why they are picking the numbers they are, and what justification there is for those choices. That’s part of the methodology section. Why do you pick the numbers you pick? What is the evidence for those numbers? It is very fair for White to point out that Rummel’s numbers do not fit with the bulk of other scholars. Any time someone is an outlyer, you have to ask why their numbers are so different. And showing that Rummel’s numbers provide a pattern, and that pattern serves an agenda, is good scholarship. It’s up to Rummel to justify the choices. White is pointing out where Rummel has not done a sufficient job in explaining himself.
And I have no stake in this either way, just explaining what I see from the links provided.
Good Post, but i’d like to say who-ever controls you IS YOUR GOVERNMENT, unless
you think you have any choice in whether or not you can effect their degree of control they exert over you, of course. Now, i’m sure we can agree to some extent that a Government is a high entity that maintains your laws and freedoms to an exceptional status, if you have any. So, maintenance and status will always include the option to drop them below the needed degree to retain them, and the option to make them better. So what if the Government took them away? Note special forces, U.S army, martial law, Airplanes, jets, NYPD, Marine corps, etc!