ttbn

All wars involving the western elite are made up of killers who claim to hold Christian ethics and values. Along with the guns and bombs these Christians also take along their padres to pray for their murderous success.

As for your spin on WWI and II, me thinks you watched too many John Wayne movies.

Paul,

And the Soviet Union's leaders proclaimed themselves as atheists, and murdered tens of millions of their fellow-citizens. Because of their atheism ? I don't think so.

Correlation does not mean causation. As an atheist, I don't think that Soviet atheism was central to their mass-murder - rather, it was a failed ideology (within weeks of the Revolution) and a paranoia about dissent. But more crucial was the anti-democratic belief that, since they had the One True Utopian Blueprint, anybody who questioned it was an enemy, to be exterminated.

Extreme-Right and extreme-Left tend to unintentionally converge in their devaluation of democracy: in the twenties and even the thirties, many left-wingers (and even some right-wingers) praised both Mussolini's fascism and Lenin's and Stalin's Bolshevism as equally promising as bringing about a sort of New Society free of bourgeois prejudices like democracy, the right to vote, the rule of law, etc. in favour of a 'brave' and 'stern' unblinking focus on the Bright Pre-Written Future.

But, instead of a straight-line political spectrum from extreme-Left to extreme-Right, with Democracy somewhere in the middle, I agree with writers like Hayek who proposed something more like a triangle, with flexible arms at the ends of which were those extremes pivoting away from Democracy, which could move towards each other - in other words, socialism could - and in my view, inevitably would - swing towards fascism when it was deemed 'socially necessary', to 'protect the revolution'.

What else would one call China's policies towards the Uighur people of Xinzhiang ? Not much 'love thy neighbour' there.

So I hope that the current adolescent devaluing of democracy, in favour (inevitably) of 'strong leadership', even 'one world government under strong leadership', is just an temporary, infantile disorder.

Joe

Gentlemen,

Over the centuries, the number of people involved in,
and killed by, warfare has increased dramatically.

Alexander the Great set out to conquer the world as he knew
it with an army of less than 40,000 men. William the
Conqueror invaded England with 50,000 men. The Napoleonic
Wars involved hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

In the American Civil War, nearly 2 million men were under
arms. During World War I, some 65 million troops were
mobilized, and 19 million people were killed.

The carnage of that pointless and dreadful conflict so
stunned the world that people called it "the war to end all
wars," for they knew humanity would never commit such folly
again.

World War II followed a mere twenty-one years later - and this
time, almost 100 million people took up arms, and an estimated
38 million soldiers and civilians were killed. All told in the
past century there have been over forty wars that resulted in
100,000 deaths or more with a total loss of life of about
83 million people.
Today, the major powers maintain huge standing armies.

Of course, in a nuclear war, the size of armies would be
irrelevant, for the entire civilian population of the
countries concerned would be brought into the arena of battle
along with much of the rest of the world's population.

To a visitor from another planet, it would seem that the
modern world is obsessed with preparations for "defense"
(it is never called "offense"). Many countries spend more
of their budgets for military purposes than they do for
education or medical care. Over the past
century global spending for military purposes
has consumed an estimated amount in the
trillions of dollars.

This represents a colossal diversion of funds from socially useful
goals, for example, a single hour's worth of these
expenditures would suffice to save, through immunization
the 120,000 children around the world who die each
day from preventable infectious diseases.

That's something worth thinking about.

Paul

Balderdash. Is what ever you are watching or reading veiled by smoke from reefers? Atheistic Communists and Islam take the cake for mass killings.

You cannot claim to be a person of Christian virtue, and then take up arms and murder millions, not possible. War runs contrary to supposed Christian teaching.

As for the nonsense statement from the John Wayne fan; "Atheistic Communists and Islam take the cake for mass killings". BALDERDASH (the word of the day). I'll agree they kill their fair share, but the take the cake award in the past 100 years goes to the god fearing Christians!

"And the Soviet Union's leaders proclaimed themselves as atheists, and murdered tens of millions of their fellow-citizens. Because of their atheism? I don't think so."

Well Joe, must say atheism would be no impediment to murdering millions, unlike Christianity there is no atheist doctrine to prevent such. BTW Did not Joe Stalin try out for the Russian Orthodox Church?

Well said Foxy, I totally agree.

Paul,

Yes, Stalin did try out or the priesthood. I think, so did Mugabe. It's no great problem to flip from one totalitarianism, from one Utopian script, to another.

Joe