Talk:Rummel's Law


 * while the United States is often considered to most closely protect its population's personal freedoms it is has also killed far more of its citizens than any other western democracy. 

Does "killed" include executions of common criminals, or does this mean that some un-named critic is accusing the US government of the same sorts of mass murders that Rummel accuses the Communist states of committing? --Uncle Ed 20:09, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Anyway, we need a better source than critics on the left and right for this tit-for-tat counterclaim. All I could find in half and hour of Googling is the oft-repeated charge that the US and Canada lock up a higher percentage of its citizens than any other country in the Western hemisphere. Whether this means that democracies are tougher on criminals, or breed crime, or are "restricting their citizens freedom" is hard to tell.

Let's get some rebuttals or criticisms of Rummel's Law into the article. Surely some source out their has examined and rebutted it. How about some Communist apologists? --Uncle Ed 20:53, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * As far as I can tell, the term Rummel's law and the wording presented here are the coinage of Arnold Beichman, not of Rummel himself - although these are certainly Rummel's ideas. (I've seen Rummel's Law also presented as "Power kills; and absolute power kills absolutely" but it's not clear that Rummel wrote exactly that, either.) Our current article makes it sound like this is Rummel's terminology, and so the mention of Beichman is kind of inexplicable. Am I misinterpreting this -  if not, we should rewrite this to put Beichman up front and identify him. DavidWBrooks 21:05, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Maybe the article should be merged with the Rummel article, if there is no such term as Rummel's Law, i.e., if it's a private mintage of Beichman. Anyway, the idea is intriguing and should go in the Wikipedia somewhere, along with any relevant rebuttals.

There's an interchange between Kevin Shimmin and R.J. Rummel in Peace Magazine here. --Uncle Ed 21:11, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps the "killed more its citizens" thing refers to Rummel's admission that "the United States does have the highest murder rate among Western democracies." But I think that was referring to ordinary citizen vs. citizen, not the goverment conducting pogroms or mass murders. If there's evidence to the contrary, it really should go in the article, though. --Uncle Ed 21:31, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)