Steven Pinker draws little distinction between disorganized violence and organized violence, Steve Sailer notes:
In the first half of the 20th century, disorganized violence tended to decline throughout the West, while the power of organized violence mounted to previously unimagined levels. It’s not a coincidence that the countries that wreaked so much havoc abroad during the World Wars tended to be orderly at home.
The urge to get better at organized violence drove many of the reforms that Pinker lauds, such as mass education. After the German-speaking lands had been Europe’s designated punching bag in the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648, the Prussians increasingly rationalized their society to support an army powerful enough to be victimizer rather than victim. The most famous Enlightened Despot was the Age of Reason’s greatest general, Prussia’s Frederick the Great.
As Edmund Burke pointed out in the 1790s, “The Revolution was made, not to make France free, but to make her formidable.” After Bonaparte humiliated the Prussians at the Battle of Jena in 1806, they redoubled their modernization drive. Educator Horace Mann then brought the “Prussian Model” to Massachusetts in the 1840s.