Tyranny is tyranny. Communist regimes killed plenty of kids also. I seem to remember that communism was considered the ultimate progressive idea in the 20th century. Pol Pot reversed the process, using children to execute the older population.

We are in a century where man is still man – flawed. Only through appropriate moral and legal structures can we minimize the damage wrought by the worst among us. Nothing has changed. Even today we are throwing out the good moral systems along with the bad ones (I am referring to religions). Again, nothing new. The French Revolutionaries did the same thing.

Tyranny requires nothing more than a collapse of civilized morality. That’s it. Let that collapse and laws don’t work because those with power don’t feel compelled to go obey or enforce the laws. Others feel nothing wrong with seeking greater power, and for the sociopaths, society has no moral weapons to keep them from the levers of power.

I find this story disgusting, revolting, painful. But the same level of inhumanity was going on on a day by day basis, with full knowledge of officers at all levels, in every communist country on earth, and still is in those that survive. Since Vietnam is in the news, the VC were committing even worse atrocities in huge numbers in the ’60s, killing 10′s of thousands of village chieftain families – starting with the kids, then disemboweling the wife, and finally killing the chieftain. In that little country, in one summer, they did this 60,000 times.