Heh.
Quite right. Self-identification is often quite political but no less real for all of that. Up until the 18th-19th century the Ottoman elite in no way identified themselves as “Turks.” “Turk” was a synonym for “country hick.” This of course changed with the rise of ethnic nationalism.
Unpossible!!!
As always, thanks for your contribution to fighting ignorance.
Again, I didn’t (or at least didn’t mean to) imply that. I meant that I see no evidence that democratic regimes are less murderous to outsiders than authoritarian ones; not that they are more so.
My apologies…I didn’t mean to try and hand you a position. Like I said, I don’t know if they have or haven’t been less murderous than their authoritative or totalitarian counterparts externally. I doubt there are good metrics on that, and it would depend on assumptions such as if we are to include all conflicts, or only conflicts started by or against a given party (for instance, the Soviet Union was attacked by Germany, so does that mean you don’t count all of the German and their allies troops and civilians killed, or do you count them because the Soviet Union actually invaded Finland and assisted Germany in conquering and occupying Poland?).
-XT
Straight Dope quibble:
The death toll at Kent State was
one protestor,
two uninvolved students moving between classes just as the Chancellor had asked the student body to do,
and one pro-National Guard student who had wandered down to the area to see how the Guard employed anti-crowd tactics.
Thanks. I actually didn’t know that, despite the fact that I actually remember when it happened. I saw it on the news. I always thought it was 4 protesters that were killed, not 1 protester and 3 bystanders.
-XT
The fact that others have cited to your link does not, in and of itself, make its information true.
Really now? So, if I linked to something purporting to give a number for the people killed by “the bloodthirsty American Empire,” you would not be hesitant to accept the validity of such a blatantly biased source?
I deny that editorial opinions and neutral reporting can coexist in a single document. A lot of people will have strong opinions regarding the Khmer Rouge, and that is fine. However, when I look for facts, I seek out sources that at least try to strive for some measure of unbiased neutrality. Openly partisan sources tend to be less than reliable information sources.
I’m afraid that neither I nor anyone can provide you with the answers that you seek here. Comprehensive records of executions in the USSR and early PRC are not currently available, and I doubt that this will change any time soon. To put it simply, we will never know. In the absence of this knowledge, I am highly skeptical of the huge multi-million numbers that are kicked around by anti-socialists such as yourself. Dig deep enough, and you’ll see that these numbers are largely based on nothing at all.
I think you’re a bit confused, my friend. If you are trying to count the Soviet casualties caused by Soviet agents, it hardly seems logical to count the Soviets killed by German invaders…
Note that my assertions have nothing to do with absolute numbers; I stated only that democracies are not perceptibly more humane or peaceful than autocratic states.
You make two major mistakes that I can see:
(1) Your argument seems to boil down to “We killed less people than you did, so we’re the good guys!” Um, no, I don’t think so. Even assuming that you are correct… Being a slightly less accomplished serial killer than the next guy is hardly a mark of good character. You are not absolved of your crimes simply because someone else’s crimes may be greater.
(2) You try to introduce a false distinction between outsiders and insiders; I reject this reasoning. Humans are humans, regardless of their citizenship. It’s not good enough to kill relatively few of your own citizens when you have the blood of millions of Filipinos/Vietnamese/Chinese/Koreans/Iraqis/Afghanis/Panamanians/Mexicans/Puerto Ricans/etc./etc./etc. on your hands. And that’s before we even consider your genocide against the Native Americans and your brutal enslavement of black Africans.
And, of course, we’re now quite far off the actual topic of the thread, namely, that an autocratic thug who thwarts the will of the people and who supports the worst type of materialistic excesses is a hero because he hates the United States.
Yes, thank God Pinochet launched his coup to save Chile from Allende elected by the misguided masses. 
[QUOTE=Commissar]
The fact that others have cited to your link does not, in and of itself, make its information true.
[/QUOTE]
It does not make them false, either. Since you have chosen not to provide numbers of your own, I’ll just stick with these.
Perhaps. However, unless I was willing to go look for alternative numbers of my own, merely pointing to the fact that it’s using hyperbolic language really proves nothing, and I’d rightfully be laughed at by my fellow board members for trying to say otherwise.
And yet, you provide no facts, merely a lot of empty words. Certainly ‘hell state’ is colorful language. However, the actual facts are that the Khmer Rouge were a brutal dictatorship who killed off a huge percentage of their relatively small population.
So, in other words, you have nothing other than your faith based appraisal. That’s fine.
No, I think you are a bit confused and should go back and re-read what I wrote. Assuming you are unwilling to do so, I’ll attempt to clarify. You claim that the 60 million dead figure is ‘bizarre’ because the Soviet Union ‘never even reached a population of 300 million’. I pointed out that during WWII alone, in a period of merely 6 years the Soviet Union lost between 20-24 million dead (civilian and military) alone. So, attempting to say that losing 60 million over several decades, even though they never reached 300 million makes zero sense. Do you get it now?
Note: Your unsubstantiated opinion is worth basically nothing to anyone other than you. Just as my unsubstantiated opinion is worth nothing to anyone other than me.
Um, no. I’ve asked you to back up certain things and instead you’ve chosen a different path in the hope, one supposed, of obfuscating the discussion. I don’t know if it’s working out well on others, but it’s not working so well on me. YMMV of course.
Or, to put it another way, I’m not trying to prove that democracies are better than totalitarian governments based on body count alone. In fact, I’m not trying to ‘prove’ this in any way, since to me it’s like being asked to prove that water is wet. You have asserted that democracies are worse, but you have thus far failed to proved any evidence to substantiate your case. It’s YOUR argument to prove, not mine to disprove. Feel free to back up any of your assertions.
No, I didn’t introduce this at all…I merely responded when another poster introduced it. Is this the sum total of your case against democracy? Or do you have more evidence? Because, while the above sounds pretty grim, it’s not even in the same universe as the list of crimes and genocide in totalitarian regimes, regardless of if they were communist, fascist or other.
-XT
Let me respond to this particular charge. Where the Hell did you get the millions statistic from anyway? I am Korean-American and I will say I am thankful America saved us from totalitarian dominionism in the Korean War-remember the war was started by the commies. American actions against Native Americans, deplorable as they were, were not genocide in the sense of the Holocaust or Rwanda in the sense it was never the policy of the government to kill every Amerindian-the majority of deaths coming from disease. As to slavery every nation at the time had slavery or serfdom of some sort so you cannot particularly blame any nation for it. Not to mention that conditions in Red gulags are far worse than in antebellum slave plantations.
[QUOTE=FinnAgain]
And, of course, we’re now quite far off the actual topic of the thread, namely, that an autocratic thug who thwarts the will of the people and who supports the worst type of materialistic excesses is a hero because he hates the United States.
[/QUOTE]
I figured that even the OP isn’t able to maintain a straight face when attempting to discuss or justify the original load of assertions, so has moved on to trying to muddy the waters and perhaps redirect the thread into endless discussion about how democracy is really the evil…
-XT
Quick question Commissar. Is your opposition to the Libyan revolt strictly because you support Gaddafi, or because of some statements made by the rebels as to their vision of a new government? Because as far as I have seen the only thing those people are revolting against is Uncle Mo. I haven’t heard anyone crying out for a return of Italian rule or what not.
And a follow up - even you must admit that one of the flaws of not having any elections is that someone like Gaddafi is allowed to stick around and devolve from visionary patriot to despot. The cult of personality is a valuable tool for the revolutionary, but it becomes an agent of corruption when even great (or Dear) leaders stay around past their effectiveness.
[QUOTE=Qin Shi Huangdi]
Let me respond to this particular charge. Where the Hell did you get the millions statistic from anyway? I am Korean-American and I will say I am thankful America saved us from totalitarian dominionism in the Korean War-remember the war was started by the commies. American actions against Native Americans, deplorable as they were, were not genocide in the sense of the Holocaust or Rwanda in the sense it was never the policy of the government to kill every Amerindian-the majority of deaths coming from disease. As to slavery every nation at the time had slavery or serfdom of some sort so you cannot particularly blame any nation for it. Not to mention that conditions in Red gulags are far worse than in antebellum slave plantations.
[/QUOTE]
Actually, he’s right…it was millions. From memory we are talking about something like 300k dead Filipinos (plus a large share of misery in our failed attempt to get in the colonialization game), at least a million Vietnamese dead (including military deaths), half a million or more Chinese (of course, they chose to get into that war themselves), at least that many or more North Korean’s (same, though giving the NK government enough food to feed their starving people probably gives us a bit of slack here), Something like 50k to…well, gods know how many Iraqi’s, same with Afghani’s, smaller numbers of Panamanian’s, Puerto Rican’s, Mexican’s and our share of what happened to the Native American’s and of course what we did to the slaves. So…perhaps as much as 2-5 million people that were killed directly through our actions. That’s pretty bad.
But it pales when one considers nations like the Soviet Union and China. Even if we double or triple those numbers we aren’t in the same league, unless you are completely in denial as the OP is. America is no angel…we are not completely clean and unsullied. We’ve done bad things. However, when stacked up against other comparable major powers we are pretty small potatoes, death toll wise. And when stacked up against the hero’s of the OP, we aren’t even in the same universe.
-XT
I agree but is that including all the people who died in the wars involved or just those killed by Americans? For instance we weren’t involved in the Chinese Civil War directly except in giving the Nationalists weapons.
It’s counting the folks killed in military action as well as civilian dead, and doesn’t count a lot of the misery factor, or those killed indirectly through actions or non-actions (or actions by others acting under our direction). There are a ton of variables when determining some of this stuff…just try and nail down an exact count of Iraqi dead alone and you will get wildly varied numbers, depending on what assumptions you make, what data you use, etc etc.
However, going strictly by body count, the US isn’t even in the top 5 countries since the 20th century in direct deaths. And, of course, there is the fact that the US has done a lot of good as well (again, it would depend on what factors you use, but I’d say that especially since WWII we’ve done quite a bit to improve standards of living throughout the world…if nothing else by providing a huge market for other nations to sell their goods and services, thus injecting their economies with capital).
-XT
Well, that and of course the whole thing is a rationalization so Commissar can pound the “Grrrr, America/capitalism/freedom/justice/whatever” drum.
Take the rant about the US’ history of slavery (which was never a unanimous position and which we fought a freakin’ civil war over)… the slave trade in Tripoli continued longer than the slave trade in the US. By several decades. And even now there’s good evidence that slavery is still being condoned by the Libyan regime.
[QUOTE=FinnAgain]
Well, that and of course the whole thing is a rationalization so Commissar can pound the “Grrrr, America/capitalism/freedom/justice/whatever” drum.
[/QUOTE]
True. It’s a pretty common theme. It works well when you take America in isolation and don’t use any sort of comparison or context too. I mean, who is going to argue that slavery was a good thing, or that killing 10’s of thousands or 100’s of thousands of Native American’s was a good thing? Not many people are going to argue very strongly that the US invasion of Iraq was a good thing these days for that matter, and certainly there aren’t going to be many takers for what we did in the Philippines during the heady days of our attempt at colonialism.
IIRC, China outlawed slavery in the early 1900’s and while Russia outlawed slavery in the 18th century they had serfdom until fairly late. Even after the revolution not all of the ‘good workers and peasants’ were treated much better than slaves, especially if accused of some crime against the state. I remember reading about Soviet work gangs building the Moscow underground that weren’t exactly uplifting or inspiring…
-XT
Commissar has already stated that he does not believe that North Korea started the Korean Conflict.