Limited Time Offer
Premium members can get their quote collection automatically imported into their Quotewise collections.
"The Polarity Principle:" The more government, the more violence. By ‘more government’ is meant more centralization of government power, more intervention in personal, social, and economic affairs and activities, more limits on political criticism and competition, and more narrowing of electoral choices. In other words, by ‘more government’ is meant less freedom, less civil liberties, political rights, and economic freedom.
Rudolph Joseph Rummel (October 21, 1932 – March 2, 2014) was professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii. He spent his career studying data on collective violence and war with a view toward helping their resolution or elimination. Rummel coined the term “democide” for murder by government (compare genocide), such as the Stalinist purges and Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
Limited Time Offer
Premium members can get their quote collection automatically imported into their Quotewise collections.
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
The evidence on this question is persuasive: the best way of eliminating war between nations, of minimizing domestic political violence, and of virtually making genocide and mass murder a horror of the past, is by fostering political freedom. Politically free nations do not make war on each other, have minimum domestic political violence, and virtually no genocide and mass murder. I call this the miracle that is freedom.
In a few cases, regimes have publicized their murders, often to intimidate people. For instance, Communist Chinese government newspapers would report speeches by officials in which one might boast, ‘We killed 2 million bandits in the 10th region between November and January.’ The term bandit was standard lingo for presumed counterrevolutionaries.