The past century witnessed some of the most ruthless regimes and barbarous dictators in world history. What is most astonishing is the number of people murdered by their own government.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, R.J. Rummel, professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, and author of "Death by Government," estimates that governments have murdered 170 million of their own citizens.Under Adolf Hitler from 1933-45, the Nazis murdered about 21 million Jews, Slavs, Serbs, Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians and others considered misfits such as the mentally ill. But the Nazis ranked a distant third when it comes to murderous governments.Between 1917 and 1987, the former Soviet Union murdered 62 million of its own citizens, and between 1949 and 1987 the People's Republic of China murdered 35 million of its citizens.The concentration of power under one centralized government by ruthless leaders like Hitler, Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong made these exterminations possible.When our Founding Fathers created our Constitution they dispersed the political power by giving the individual states competitive authority to protect the people from a tyrannical central government. That is why we see so many states challenging the federal government on highly charged issues such as mandated national health care, immigration, education and crime fighting.I recently saw photos taken the personal scrapbook of Karl Hocker, the adjutant to the commandant of the Nazi extermination camp in Auschwitz, Poland, where 1.1 million prisoners, mostly Jews, were murdered during World War II. The photos showed Nazi staff members, both men and women, smiling and laughing as they lined up for a sing-along during their "off-duty" hours. One shows a group of female Nazi staffers sitting along a fence eating bowls of blueberries, just like normal human beings.Sara Bloomfield, director of The Holocaust Museum in Washington, says the photos offer an important perspective on the psychology of those carrying out genocide. They vividly illustrate the contented world they enjoyed while overseeing their inhuman acts.Recently released undercover videos on Planned Parenthood showing the harvesting of aborted body parts for money is just as sickening and insidious. As the largest abortion provider in the world, Planned Parenthood performed a reported 327,653 abortions in 2013 alone.One video shows Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood's medical director, eating a salad and sipping wine while describing how she kills the unborn in order to harvest their vital organs, which are then sent to biotech firms for a fee.The other shows Dr. Mary Gatter, president of its Council of Medical Directors, explaining how her abortionists are able to use "a less crunchy technique to get whole specimens."Crushing human bodies. Evacuating human skulls. It's not Germany 1943 but America 2015. How can any civilized society defend such an inhumane business as killing and harvesting baby body parts for money?Defenders of Planned Parenthood claim that its primary focus is on women's health, and providing abortions is only secondary. They also claim the tapes were unfairly edited. Such attempts to explain their work just deflect from the main story, which is the harvesting of baby organs for a fee.Many Americans who see these disgusting videos have more of a moral conscience than those in the major networks and liberal news outlets like The New York Times which choose to downplay, or largely ignore, this dehumanizing story.By JIM ZBICKtneditor@tnonline.com