Critics attack the administration’s focus on instituting democracy as the best long-term policy to defuse Islamic jihad. Rudy Rummel makes the case in behalf of democracy in his “Never Again: Ending War, Democide, & Famine Through Democratic Freedom.”
Readers should take advantage of his extraordinary offer of a free pdf version of the book, which can be downloaded here.
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Rudy writes of this book:
The book also provides an essential understanding of the theoretical and historical basis of President George Bush’s democratic peace foreign policy—his Forward Strategy of Freedom. It argues philosophically, and from international law, that individual freedom is the most basic human right. This, and that freedom is a natural desire of all people, would be enough to justify freedom for everyone. But, the major substance of Never Again goes far beyond these justifications to establish that freedom is also a Moral Good.
One Moral Good is that liberal democracies, those whose people are individually free with secure civil and political rights and liberties, don’t make war on each other, as President Bush has stated correctly in support of his foreign policy. Another is that their democratic governments do not murder them. And a third is that their internal political violence is minimal compared to non-democracies.
All this alone would make freedom the foremost Moral Good. But this book also shows that free people—democracies—never have famines, and that freedom is an engine of the greatest wealth and development among nations.
In short, to the Moral Imperative, “No people should ever suffer war, democide, famine, and mass impoverishment, no, never again,” this book proves that fostering individual freedom is the practical way to assure this.
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