|
Click to get your own audio CDs of Rummel's THE BLUE BOOK OF FREEDOM and
board the freedom train
Click
me
if you are interested in an alternative history series of six novels based on
the democratic peace, all free pdf downloads
Also, Click the above to read the synopsis of the nonfiction book, Never Again: Ending War, Democide, &
Famine Through Democratic Freedom Available from Amazon.com,
or as a FREE pdf download .
SEARCH
Search the web, or the over 1,100 documents
and 5,000 pages of text on this site. If needed, see help page.
DEMOCRATIC PEACE
CLOCK
The Democratic Peace has kicked in, global
violence is decreasing, and it is thus the dawning of a new world. Click
the clock to see more detail and the empirical evidence.
Saving
Lives, Enriching Life: Freedom as a Right, and a Moral Good was
published in January 2001 only on this web site. It is the keystone of the
ideas and findings here regarding national poverty, famine, genocide and
mass murder, and war. It should be the first stop for those who wish to
study or survey this site's documents. Click above image.
VISUALIZING
DEMOCIDE TOLL
See
Investigations into Visualizing Democide, such
as the:
Rings of Tears 
DOCUDRAMAS
For dramatic attempts to give human feeling
to democide statistics and to characterize democidal events, such as
China's Cultural Revolution, and Pol Pot's Cambodian Communist Revolution, click here.
|
             
 
     
Dedicated to those who are
not yet living in freedom, who suffer repression, regime-made famine,
torture, gulags, and fear for their lives and those of their loved ones; and
thanks to the internet, have reached this home page.
Professor Rummel passed away on March 2, 2014. His "Powerkills" website will be maintained by the University of Hawaii Political Science Department. Please contact dougbond@fas.harvard.edu with any questions or comments.
|
Freedom,
Democracy,
Peace;
Power,
Democide,
and War
NEW: "A Freedomist View" Blog
Click on the justice scales to access my new "A Freedomist View" blog created as of June 13, 2009.
As to the blog at FREEDOMSPEACE.BLOGSPOT.COM, Google (the new blog host) accidently erased the whole thing, and so any links to it will not work.
Fortunately, I saved on my hard disk all the blogs I posted there, and am republishing those that are not out of date here. Some provide research results, analyses, and theory just as important and relevant today as when they were published. Those now reposted to the blog are shown in green in the archive.I will link to them often in the new freedomist view blog.
OCCASIONAL COMMENTARY ARCHIVE
c
For an archive of website
related commentary, click the above image. Some old commentary is now posted
on the Democratic Peace Blog, as shown in green in the archive.
|
|
Power tends to corrupt, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely.
----Lord Acton
Power kills; absolute power kills
absolutely.
----This Web Site
Introduction
It is true
that democratic freedom is an engine of national and individual wealth and
prosperity. Hardly known, however, is that freedom also saves millions of lives
from famine, disease, war, collective violence, and democide (genocide and mass
murder). That is, the more freedom, the greater the human security and the less
the violence. Conversely, the more power governments have, the more human
insecurity and violence. In short: to our realization that power impoverishes
we must also add that power kills.
Through
theoretical analysis, historical case studies, empirical data, and quantitative
analyses, this web site shows that:
- Freedom
is a basic human right recognized by the United Nations and international
treaties, and is the heart of social justice.
- Freedom
is an engine of economic and human development, and scientific and
technological advancement.
- Freedom
ameliorates the problem of mass poverty.
- Free
people do not suffer from and never have had famines, and by theory,
should not. Freedom is therefore a solution to hunger and famine.
- Free
people have the least internal violence, turmoil, and political
instability.
- Free
people have virtually no government genocide and mass murder, and for good
theoretical reasons. Freedom is therefore a solution to genocide and mass
murder; the only practical means of making sure that "Never
again"
- Free
people do not make war on each other, and the greater the freedom within
two nations, the less violence between them.
- Freedom
is a method of nonviolence--the most peaceful nations are those whose
people are free.
The purpose
of this web site, then, is to make as widely available as possible the
theories, work, results, and data that empirically and historically,
quantitatively and qualitatively, support these conclusions about freedom. This
is to invite their use, replication, and critical evaluation, and thereby to
advance our knowledge of and confidence in freedom--in liberal democracy. It is
to foster freedom.
Pray tell, my brother, Why do dictators kill and make war? Is it for glory; for things, for beliefs, for hatred, for power? Yes, but more, because they can. |
IMPORTANT NOTE: Among all the democide estimates appearing on this
website, some have been revised upward. I have changed that for Mao's famine,
1958-1962, from zero to 38,000,000. And thus I have had to change the overall
democide for the PRC (1928-1987) from 38,702,000 to 76,702,000. Details here.
I have
changed my estimate for colonial democide from 870,000 to an additional
50,000,000. Details here.
Thus, the new
world total: old total 1900-1999 = 174,000,000. New World total = 174,000,000 +
38,000,000 (new for China) + 50,000,000 (new for Colonies) = 262,000,000.
Just to give
perspective on this incredible murder by government, if all these bodies were
laid head to toe, with the average height being 5', then they would circle the
earth ten times. Also, this democide murdered 6 times more people than died in
combat in all the foreign and internal wars of the century. Finally, given
popular estimates of the dead in a major nuclear war, this total democide is as
though such a war did occur, but with its dead spread over a century.
Contact E-mail: Rummel at Hawaii.edu
|