Genghis

Funny op-ed in the Telegraph today about "being to the right of Genghis Kahn." LINK. Excerpt:

But does Genghis really deserve his conservative reputation? After all, he had pretty radical ideas about social reform. When he conquered a new tribe, it was his custom to liquidate the aristocracy and assimilate the lower orders: "providing opportunities for the many and not the few", as it were. Where modern socialists are sometimes accused of cutting high achievers down to size, Genghis did this literally, ordering the execution of all Tatars over a certain height. He was a great believer in state power, replacing Mongolia's clan system with a rudimentary bureaucracy. He was even an early decimaliser, organising his forces in units of 10. Above all, he was a supra-nationalist, deliberately mingling subject populations to destroy their sense of national identity.