Ask them whether people starved to death because of crop failures or the agricultural policy of the new deal... then try to figure out why crops would be burned while people starved.
In the book "Tombstone" (the book by the author in the OP), the author reiterates the claim that no democracy has ever suffered from a major famine, but are you asserting an equivalency?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/opinion/chinas-great-shame...
> The reason is political: a full exposure of the Great Famine could undermine the legitimacy of a ruling party that clings to the political legacy of Mao, even though that legacy, a totalitarian Communist system, was the root cause of the famine. As the economist Amartya Sen has observed, no major famine has ever occurred in a democracy.
Also, your reference doesn't fare to good there.