Re: And how did you celebrate 1 May?

On Tue, 06 May 2008 13:56:51 -0700, archmage@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (Nate
Edel) wrote:

>David Friedman <ddfr@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> We have a sample of one independent Nazi government. We have a larger 
>> sample of communist governments. Not all of them were murderous on 
>> something like the the Nazi scale--I think Cuba is pretty clearly an 
>> exception, although that may be partly because it was easier for people

>> to leave--but at least four that I can think of were, and one of those 
>> killed a considerably larger fraction of the people it controlled than 
>> the Nazis did. 
>>
>> So on the whole, I think the evidence that murdering very large numbers

>> of people is closely connected to communism is better than the evidence

>> that it is closely connected to Nazism.
>
>In at least three of the cases, were the underlying ideologies really all
>that much more relevant than "dictatorship by an insane person" (as was
>clearly the case with Hitler, Mao and Stalin, and probably Pol Pot.) 

I don't think you can describe Hitler as insane, and probably
cannot do so for Stalin, either.  I don't know enough about Pol
Pot to hold an opinion as to his sanity.
-- 
Doug Wickström
har fiol, vill resa