The latest from Professor Rummel.

On Freedom's Principles
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I have been working for over a year on my interactive book in progress, Freedom's Principles: Principles Toward Understanding And Promoting Democratic Freedom At Home And Abroad, which I set up as a blog here. It is now done through the third draft. With this book complete, I'm not sure what to do with it. I can leave it as a blog, make it downloadable free from my website, or try to find an agent who will help publish it. I've had such bad experience with agents (I've accumulated about 50 rejections or no responses from those I've tried for my The Blue Book of Freedom), that I'm reluctant to put in the time on trying to find one for this book. Anyway, there is no hurry, and it is available already on the above blog.

I can't end my link to it and the ideas contained therein without including here what is an appropriate conclusion. This is the final chapter of my The Just Peace, Vol. 5 of my Understanding Conflict and War (published by Sage Publications, and all on my website—see under "Books" of my "documents on site"):


CONCLUSION

From every mountainside Let freedom ring.

----Samuel Francis Smith, America

From the beginning of these [five] volumes two basic questions have focused my efforts. Are violence and war inevitable? If not, what can be done about them? I can now give my answers.

What each of us wants and can and will pursue will change in time. Corresponding social adjustments must thereby be made with others. And unavoidably, some necessary adjustments will be dammed up by conflicts over vital interests and antagonistic views of truth, morality, and justice. Violence is then the inevitable recourse, the ultimate means, of conflict resolution and social adaptation.

This does not mean that a particular type of violence is certain. Nor is widely destructive, collective violence necessary. And especially, war between or within states is not inevitable. Rather, the violence that is used and its intensity is a matter of society's structure and culture.

Particularly, minimizing the intensity of violence and eliminating war requires promoting and protecting a free society--an exchange society--at the national and international levels. For a lasting and just peace, restrict and limit government.

In total, some violence is inevitable; extreme violence and war are not. To eliminate war, to restrain violence, to nurture universal peace and justice, is to foster freedom.