A vicious dictator, Joseph Stalin, is quoted as having said, “One man being killed is a tragedy. Killing millions is nothing but a statistic.”

In his latest Liberty Report, three-time presidential candidate and former Texas Rep. Ron Paul discussed the relevance of this quote to the way government and media treats these tragedies and statistics.

“We are now very concerned about tragic death,” Paul said, referencing the recent deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, who were killed at the hands of a militarized police force. There are a lot of emotions surrounding these tragedies, and those emotions are sometimes used by people to make certain points. At the same time, other deaths are being ignored.

When Lady Nancy Astor confronted Stalin, asking him how long he would continue killing people, he is know to have said, “As long as it’s necessary.”

That is the psychological framework from which he operated, Paul noted. “Is that the direction we’re going in?”

If you add up deaths from American bombs and sanctions, there are a lot of people who have been killed, Paul said. When Madeleine Albright was confronted on 60 Minutes in 1996 with the statistic that 500,000 Iraqi children had died, and asked if the price was worth it, Albright replied that “We think the price is worth it.”

By that standard, the U.S. government killing people seems to be just “doing what is necessary,” Paul said.

And how long will our war in the Middle East go on? U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has said to prepare for a “long war“.

We have come to a point where, legally speaking, we can say anyone opposed to the government is a terrorist, Paul said—even if we are going in and invading another country. Paul said that if they shoot back, then they are a terrorist.

When the media reports on a small event, they use it to take away power from the individual and give it to the state, according to Liberty Report co-host Daniel McAdams. The tragedy of a million dead shows the failure of power, he explained. Paul agreed, noting that government and media succeed in changing our attitudes of these events, and that we make heroes out of the people who are killing people endlessly.

Watch the full episode above and check out more episodes of the Ron Paul Liberty Report here at Truth In Media.

In case you missed Ben Swann’s Truth In Media episode on ISIS watch it below: