In a recent article by Walter Williams titled, How To Assist Evil, he makes the point that since the beginning of the 20th century, 170 million people have been killed by their own government, where as only 60 million were killed in wars. When it comes to killing your own citizens we always think of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Unfortunately it was just one of the many examples of Government atrocities against their citizens.
Here are some excerpts from the article.
THE HOLOCAUST
“Though the Holocaust ranks high among the great human tragedies, most people never consider the most important question: How did Adolf Hitler gain the power that they needed to commit such horror?”
“Through the Enabling Act (1933), whose formal name was “A Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich,” Hitler gained the power to enact laws with neither the involvement nor the approval of the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament……It was decent Germans who made Hitler’s terror possible – Germans who would have never supported his territorial designs and atrocities.”
OTHER ATROCITIES IN THE 20th CENTURY
“….since the beginning of the 20th century, governments have killed 170 million of their own citizens. top killers were the Soviet Union, which, between 1917 and 1987, killed 62 million of its own citizens, and the People’s Republic of China, which, between 1949 and 1987, was responsible for the deaths of 35 to 40 million of its citizens. In a distant third place were the Nazis, who murdered about 16 million Jews, Slavs, Serbs, Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians and others deemed misfits, such as homosexuals and the mentally ill.”
“We might ask why the 20th century was so barbaric. Surely, there were barbarians during earlier ages. Part of the answer is that during earlier times, there wasn’t the kind of concentration of power that emerged during the 20th century.”
IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE
“….The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects…..the elite’s use government to dupe and forcibly impose its will on the masses. The Masses are always duped by well-intentioned phrases….what German could have been against “A Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich”?….and who could be against the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”?”
“We Americans ought to keep the fact in mind that Hitler, Stalin and Mao would have had more success in their reign of terror if they had the kind of control and information about their citizens that agencies such as the NSA, the IRS and the ATF have about us…”
The Road To Serfdom, by F.A. Hayek was written in 1944. It is a book that answers the question Dr. Williams asks in his article. Hayek lived in Germany during the time before Hitler came into power. He explains how the concentration of power just doesn’t lead to serfdom, it is the road to serfdom.
Related Article, Terminus On The Road To Serfdom, by D.W. MacKenzie, at mises.org.
Here is The Road To Serfdom, at mises.org.
Here is The Illustrated Road To Serfdom , at mises.org.
AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ADDICT 