This is completely irrelevant to the world of trading, but I’ll just get it off my chest. Below is a short clip from our patron saint. He expresses a sentiment I’ve heard in all-too-many commentaries and comedy routines (which are kind of the same thing, really) which is that the #1 reason for death in the human race is religion.
Now I’ve been with live audiences when such a sentiment was expressed, and the reaction is typically thunderous applause. It always bugged me, though, and I never really gave it much thought until I was strolling my dogs in the pre-dawn hours this morning (which is my typical thinking time).
I didn’t whip out a spreadsheet and start counting deaths, but if you think about the atrocities in human history in which millions of people were killed, the kind of names that come to mind are Stalin……….Mao……….Hitler. Indeed, it makes a lot more sense to blame political ideologies for death than it does religion.
Obviously it became fashionable to blame religion for deaths after 9/11, because nearly 3,000 
were killed on that day by Muslim terrorists. And yet over three times that many die every year – – year after year – – by drunk drivers. Can you imagine what we’d be going through if something like 9/11 happened at some point every single year?
Indeed, if you want to find out who is responsible for the greatest percentage of death in history, look no farther than Genghis Khan, who is said to have created conflicts that wiped out 10% of the human race! (Equivalent to killing 700,000,000 people today). Was it about religious zealotry? Nope.
So for all the cheering and clapping that goes on when someone blames religious differences on death……just remember religion has NOTHING on political differences. Ideological hatred based on politics wins, hands-down. Amen.
