With regard to b), governments--primarily through the use of their militaries--have killed, by some counts 170,000,000, men, women and children in this century alone. Hardly the guardians of freedom, in my opinion.
Do you have a breakdown of that number? I'm working on one of my thought experiments and am looking for the appropriate stats: o THUGS V. GOVS (during times of "modern" govts. 1800+) Deaths by Govts. on "own people" US Civil War x M US Native Americans Hitler: Jews 6 M Hitler: Others 6 M Stalin: 30 M China: Cult Rev x M France: Rev x M Deaths by Thugs Murders in whole world ^^^ See to be valid, I think I'd have to including thugs all over the world (since I use genocides all over the world) but if I had the death/person US figure, I could multiply that by the whole world and have a upper bound (conservative) since US has a partcularly large amount of murderes. _______________________ Regards, In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty. -Christopher Morley Joseph Reagle http://rpcp.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html reagle@mit.edu E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65 BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E