When Wingnuts Read!

A Washington lawyer friend of mine who reads Wonkette on an hourly basis directs us to a great piece of right-wing wingnuttery:

HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE :: Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries:

• The Communist Manifesto
• Mein Kampf
• Quotations from Chairman Mao
• The Kinsey Report
• Democracy and Education
• Das Kapital
• The Feminine Mystique
• The Course of Positive Philosophy
• Beyond Good and Evil
• General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Comments

[Miracle Max]

They forgot Cap'n Billy's Wizbang.

[engels]

It's good they provide Amazon referrer links so you can support the forces of freedom while corrupting your mind.

[Jacob T. Levy]

Egad. Keep going; the runners-up include _On Liberty_ and _Origin of Species_ and _Second Sex_, right there alongside _What is to be Done?_

[Dave L]

"The Feminist Mystique"??!!!

They've never read it - of course, that's probably true of everything else on the list.

They should start a new list - the 10 most harmful individuals in the Second Millenium:

1. Johannes Gutenberg

[engels]

'On Liberty' gets an honourable mention!

[pgl]

Actually, the General Theory may be a dangerous book but not for the reasons given (the standard, Keynes was an elitist leftie and all he wanted was a bigger government - so these HEO idiots who have never read the General Theory say). You see - the General Theory is giving George W. Bush (who likely never read it either) a lame excuse to run partisan and harmful policies. If Keynes knows that long-term fiscal stimulus was being excused by his economic thesis, he'd be a-rolling in his grave.

[Tomas]

I like the desciption of Capital and General Theory. You could almost suspect they had not read them...

[pgl]

From their summaries. Engels was a limosine liberal. Keynes was a member of the British elite and a liberal Cambridge economics professor. Notice the theme: if you are both smart and wealthy, you must be EVIL. After all - their hero is "poor and stupid" Donald Luskin. Yes, they are wingnuts - but really, do they know how to read????

[Protagoras]

Cool. Half the list are philosophers. I suddenly feel a little less worthless. But is apparent that whoever wrote the comments had not read most of the books listed; to take one clear mistake out of a mess of perhaps arguable opinions, there are no superior men mentioned in _Beyond Good and Evil_. The overmen only appear in _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_, an extended parable.

And how did _On Liberty_ get an honorable mention? Are these guys not even pretending to believe in freedom any more? Or perhaps they meant to list _The Subjection of Women_ or something, and looked up the wrong Mill title.

[VKW]

Given all the Christofascist attacks on biology teaching, I am deeply disappointed to see Charlie D score so low.

[A. Zarkov]

How many people have actually tried to read “Das Kapital,” let alone understand it? But “Coming of Age in Samoa” was a popular book and did carry influence for a profoundly flawed work. The idea that modern industrial societies are especially prone to interpersonal violence is an idea that still has traction. Fortunately we have Steven Pinker around today.

[Anderson]

"there are no superior men mentioned in _Beyond Good and Evil_."

Can't quite give you that one, Protagoras, though I know where you're coming from. The superman isn't mentioned as such, but it's pretty clear that some people are better than others, a Nietzsche axiom. A particularly apposite passage (BG&E # 30):

"That which serves the higher class of men for nourishment or refreshment, must be almost poison to an entirely different and lower order of human beings. The virtues of the common man would perhaps mean vice and weakness in a philosopher; it might be possible for a highly developed man, supposing him to degenerate and go to ruin, to acquire qualities thereby alone, for the sake of which he would have to be honoured as a saint in the lower world into which he had sunk.

"There are books which have an inverse value for the soul and the health according as the inferior soul and the lower vitality, or the higher and more powerful, make use of them. In the former case they are dangerous, disturbing, unsettling books, in the latter case they are herald-calls which summon the bravest to THEIR bravery. Books for the general reader are always ill-smelling books, the odour of paltry people clings to them. Where the populace eat and drink, and even where they reverence, it is accustomed to stink. One should not go into churches if one wishes to breathe PURE air."

I daresay that N. would positively welcome the inclusion of his book on the list in question, even if he would be greatly annoyed by his fellows.

[sm]

Reading Wonkette on an hourly basis? Fascinating. (Spock emoticon)

[JR]

Capital (Vol I) is easy to read. I read it in a seminar when I was twenty-four. It was my reading of Capital that made me quite sure that I was not a Marxist. I had previously read Schumpeter and reading Marx I understood for the first time that the theory of the falling rate of profit failed to account for innovation.

But I don't see how Capital is particularly dangerous or harmful. The Communist Manifesto would have been a more likely choice. Although given the manner in which the workers of the world and their parties responded to World War I, even that book didn't have much influence.

[punisher]

"10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money...

a recipe for ever-expanding government... FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an $8-trillion dollar debt."

[MobiusKlein]

What, no "Joy of Sex" or "Anarchist's Cookbook"?

And why would "Descent of Man" be ranked less harmful than "Origin of the Species".

[jeffk]

The thing I found most interesting about the list was the total absence of anything resembling a justification for WHY any of the books was harmful. Granted, there are descriptions, but the descriptions are merely that, from the perspective of a conservative who has read *about* a book (but who, as others have pointed out, has probably not read the book itself).

I look at lists like that, all declaration and no explanation or justification, and come to the conclusion that it's an act of intellectual masturbation, and nothing more. I'm sure the contributors thought they were doing something useful, and I'm sure the readers appreciate bashing books they don't like, but, as presented, it's really more a list of "Important Books Conservatives Don't Like".

[JR]

Sorry- they list the Communist Manifesto first, don't they? So Marx is a two-fer. Perhaps they didn't realize that Lenin wrote, too - odd that they're missing What is to be Done?

But they're very narrow-minded in their definition of harmful. No Madame Bovary? no Fleurs du Mal? No On the Road? Bad stuff, bad bad stuff.

[Emma Zahn]

What a wonderful list. I told them how much I appreciated it. Now I don't have to bother with any pesky searches at Amazon.

[Paul G. Brown]

People don't kill people. Books kill people.

[Anderson]

The funniest thing is their disparagement of "The Feminine Mystique" because Friedan (*before* she wrote it, by their own dates) had been a "Stalinist Marxist," so that presumably her every deed dripped evil.

Their source for this "once a Stalinist, always a Stalinist" implication? David Horowitz.

[lfs]

Burn all books. Burn all men/women who think. VOTE REPUBLICAN.

"Yon (name) thinks too much. Such men are dangerous".

Why am I here????

[matt]

Interesting that they didn't go after any real cutltural people like Vonnegut, Kinsey (as in Ken), Vidal, Mailer, Roth, Salinger, etc.

Nor did the list include such leftist luminaries as Rosa Luxemburg, Emma Goldman, Trotsky (altho given the genesis of the neocons, they would have liked him, Marcuse.

I guess Sartre and Camus are irrelevant to these people; they both would have appreciated that if they were still here.

Notice the works that did get mentioned are those that help people to think things out with formulas in some of them. How rude!! We can't have a bunch of people who can think for themselves running around here. That's what the NCLB act is for to make sure that testing takes up so much of a kid's time that s/he can't learn to think of anything else except the next test.

[andres]

The pitiful thing is that the panel of judges can't even be bothered with consistency or chronological accuracy. Examples:

If you include _Mein Kampf_, you have to include somewhere the _Protocols of the Elders of Zion_, which gave Adolf and company a nice starting point, not to mention modern Arab anti-semitism. Too bad that it was written by the god-fearing, Christian Tsarist regime.

If you include August Comte presumably because you're a fan of Hayek (who was never without his Comte pin-cushion doll) and because you reject hard empiricism, you would have to conclude that either a hard rationalist (Descartes, eewww a Frenchie) or a dialectician (Hegel) was a better alternative. And yet most conservatives despise these two as well.

It's curious that both _On Liberty_ and _The Feminist Mistique_ are included, but none of them thought to bring up Mill's _The Subjection of Women_, the first feminist tract written by a prominent male, and an important source for Ms. Friedan.

Although the _General Theory_ laid the groundwork, the real Keynesian "damage" was done by Samuelson's _Principles_, which doesn't even get a mention.

Lenin's _State and Revolution_ and _Left-Wing Communism_ did, IMHO, much more damage than WITBD. No mention of these either.

Nice that they mention Nietszche, but old nuthouse's screed against Christianity, _The Anti-Christ_, isn't even mentioned.

Mao's Little Red Book was not really an actual book but excerpts from his earlier essays and speeches, none of which are mentioned. The Red Book itself was published after most of the damage (Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution) had already been done.

In short, the panel members, of which only Ms. Schlafly is well-known, don't seem to be quite as well-read as they need to be in order to publish such a list.

[sara]

THis reminds me of a legend about the Arab sacker of Alexandria in Egypt, in the seventh century AD. He arrived at the famous Library of Alexandria.

He said, "If these books agree with the Koran, they are redundant, and hence worthless. If these books do not agree with the Koran, they are heretical, and ought to be destroyed."

His soldiers torched the Library. Granted, it had been burned a couple of times before, once when Caesar invaded Egypt and was more intent on screwing Cleopatra than protecting the Library.

Later on some Arab scholars did more to preserve the works of Aristotle (translated into Arabic) than medieval monks in the West were doing.

But when I see a wingnut make out a Bad Book List like this, I can easily imagine him visiting the Library of Congress and saying "If these books agree with the Bible. . . "

[Julian Elson]

I'm not sure if François Poullian de la Barre counts as a "prominent male," but he wrote some feminist tracts. I guess he probably wasn't so prominent, since his tracts were ignored at the time to the point that he had to write his own attacks on himself so that he'd be able to write rebuttals.

[Aaron]

What, no "protocals of the elders of zion"????

I demand a recount!!!!!!!!!!

[anne]

Nice, Sara :)

[anne]

http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-origin-of-species/chapter-14.html

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

[Junior]

Should also include:

Krugman/Obsfeld 'International Economics' - co-written by a Communist,

Campbell 'Biology' (6th Ed) - dangerous, junk science,

Madison et al 'Constitution of the United States' - springboard for activist judges,

The Bible - parts of it contradict the Bible,

etc, etc

[Strange Doctrines]

Meine güte: "The Nazis loved Nietzsche," sayeth The Human Events "Ten Most Harmful Books" panelists--and I am reborn in their genius.

[RSA]

Nice Darwin quotation. I find it suggestive that the list contains the incorrect title Origin of the Species, as if Darwin was writing about some particular species (or as if German was Darwin's native language), when the book is rather about how species in general could have come about: The Origin of Species.

(Also, did anyone really read Mein Kampf? I mean, was it actually influential in its time?)

[anne]

RSA, yes.

"The Origin of Species" is beautifully written and startlingly relevant.

[Julian Elson]

"The Promise of American Life?" I guess it's really true: they want to get rid of the progressive era, not just the New Deal. How long before they start pushing for the repeal of post-Civil War reforms, like, oh, the 13th amendment?

I don't get the big deal with Nietzsche, either from his admirers or his detractors: people act like he was the first atheist and moral and epistemological skeptic.

[Bob O]

CAN a book be harmful? Aren't they each just part of the conversation?

A book can certainly have a pernitious effect on some of its readers, but can that be the sole fault of the book qua book?

I suppose if you were so dumb as to view "books" as "magical talismans of learning", then the book itself could be thought of as harmful...

[engels]

"CAN a book be harmful?"

If it is dropped from a great enough height.

[Davis X. Machina]

Poor John Rawls -- I was sure he'd be on the First XI.

No "Theory of Justice"
No "Political Liberalism"

[kth]

Hard to believe, a literary enemies list that left off Rousseau, Shelley, and Byron. Not only have they probably read few of the books in question, they likely haven't even read the Paul Johnson stuff ("Intellectuals", "Modern Times") that would at least tell them why they don't have to read the evil-doers.

[chris]

Sara:

Please don't mention wingnut and Library of Congress on the same page, day, or year again, otherwise we'll be seeing the wingnut appointed with match in hand. Look at Bolton and his terror-loving statement about taking out a few floors of the U.N. Even the L o C classification system might go for a corrected version, like the Bible is book one, and connected to the Bible as book 2 has to be the autobiography of W cause he talks regularly with Jesus, # 3 probably has to be something by Pat Robinson.

[Julian Elson]

I'd say a book can be harmful. The clearest example I can think of is a book which dispenses bad technical advice to a non-expert audience. For example, a book which promises its readers that they can lose five pounds a week by following the book's nutritionally unsound, unhealthy diet is probably harmful. Similarly, a book which promises to get you out of paying taxes by claiming that the sixteenth amendment was never ratified with a quorum and that the IRS has no legal authority harms its readers. Same could be said for a book that promises you can soup of your Honda Civic to go 180 miles per hour by performing the book's homebrew modifications.

Ideologically harmful books? That's less clear-cut to me, but I don't think it can be ruled out.

[engels]

Books don't kill people. Books kill mosquitoes.

[Barbara]

I think it's bizarre that anyone would even begin with the construct that books are harmful, and it makes me think most notably of Galileo and the Inquisition. A couple of their "explanations" is enough to figure out that mostly they are dead set against rational thought.

Hence, On Democracy and Education: John Dewey, . . . was a “progressive” philosopher and leading advocate for secular humanism . . . He signed the Humanist Manifesto and rejected traditional religion and moral absolutes. In Democracy and Education . . . he . . . encouraged the teaching of thinking “skills” instead. His views . . . helped nurture the Clinton generation.

Or Introduction to Positive Philosophy: Comte, the product of a royalist Catholic family that survived the French Revolution, turned his back on his political and cultural heritage, announcing as a teenager, “I have naturally ceased to believe in God.” Later, in the six volumes of The Course of Positive Philosophy, he coined the term “sociology.” He did so while theorizing that the human mind had developed beyond “theology” (a belief that there is a God who governs the universe). . . to “positivism,” in which man alone, through scientific observation, could determine the way things ought to be.

His political heritage? Are they nuts?

[Junior]

I'd say the most harmful book I ever read was 'Atlas Shrugged'. Since I read it I've never been able to stop laughing.

[Dustin Ridgeway]

Speaking of 'Atlas Shrugged', I'm surprised no Randian works were there in place of Mill. It seems as if she would appear far more menacing to the Human Events crowd than the rather innocent Mill.

[A. Zarkov]

Can a book be harmful in some sense? I think the answer must be “yes.” If one book can be beneficial why can’t another be harmful? To believe otherwise, means books don’t matter, and I think they do.

[Linkmeister]

Did you notice that Nader's "Unsafe at any Speed" made the list (Honorable Mention)? Them evil anti-corporate guys are represented!

[cb]

"The thing I found most interesting about the list was the total absence of anything resembling a justification for WHY any of the books was harmful"

Maybe Danny Okrent put the list together.

[JT]

Interesting on Darwin. BTW, the title is not "Origin of the Species". It is "Origin of Species".

[Dan Nexon]

"Meine güte: "The Nazis loved Nietzsche," sayeth The Human Events "Ten Most Harmful Books" panelists--and I am reborn in their genius."

Funny, that was the quotation that finally drove me to find out just what kind of clowns their "experts" are....

[Ereshkigal]

What a notable panel of judges!

How could they have missed the Bible? All that stuff about judging not lest you be judged; rich men having difficulty entering heaven; tossing the moneychangers out of the temple; turning water into wine; healing the sick -- and without charge. Of course, those acts and statements were attributed to a renegade Jew who kept company with misfits, prostitutes, and the poor.

That book is so dangerous it ought to be banned from schools! Keep it away from tender minds!

[Fabulous Eggs]

This is fun. Perhaps we could make a similar list of conservative books. Surely there is enough notoriety among the posters here to equal that of the clowns that presume to be considered intellectuals on the list provided by Human Events?

[Jonathan King]

So looking at this list, I notice that there are "point values" which correspond to the rankings given by the Expert Panel (10 points for first, 9 for second...down to 1 for 10th).

Because there were 15 people on the panel, if we assume that everybody gave a list of 10 books, there were 825 total points awarded, and the top score any book could have gotten was 150. You can also show that a maximum of 150 books could have been mentioned if everybody turned in an idiosyncratic list.

As it turns out, we know that (only?) 30 books were mentioned at least twice, for a total point value of 623 points. The greatest number of books that could have been mentioned at all is (I think) 98, while the smallest is 54. Given this, it's amusing to look at the minimum/maximum number of lists the top books could have appeared on, and the maximum number of times it could have appeared in the top 5.

#1 The Communist Manifesto: 74 points, ergo 8 - 15 lists, max 12 in top 5
#2 Mein Kampf: 41 points, 5- 15 lists, max 6 in top 5
#3 Quotations from Chairman Mao: 38 points, 4 - 15 lists, max 6 in top 5
#4 The Kinsey Report: 37 points, 4-15 lists, max 6 in top 5
#5 Democracy and Education: 36 points, 4-15 lists, max 6 in top 5
#6 Das Kapital: 31 points, 4-15 lists, max 6 in top 5
#7 The Feminine Mystique: 30 points, 3-15 lists, max 6 in top 5
#8 The Course of Positive Philosophy: 28 points, 3-15 lists, max 5 in top 5
#9 Beyond Good and Evil: 28 points, 3-15 lists, max 5 in top 5
#10 General Theory: 23 points, 3-15 lists, max 3 in top 5
#11 The Population Bomb: 22 points, 3-15 lists, max 3 in top 5
#12 What is to be Done: 20 points, 2-15 lists, max 3 in top 5
#13 Authoritarian Personality: 19 points, 2-15 lists, max 3 in top 5
#14-16 On liberty, etc.: 18 points, 2-15 lists, max 3 in top 5
#17-18 Origin of Species, etc.: 17 points, 2-15 lists max 2 in top 5
#19-20 Madness and Civilization, etc.: 12 points, 2-12 lists, max 2 in top 5
#21-22 Coming of Age in Samoa, etc.: 11 points, 2-11 lists, max 1 in top 5
#23-24 Second Sex, etc.: 10 points, 2-9 lists, max 1 in top 5
#25-28 Silent Sprint, etc.: 9 points, 2-8 lists, max 1 in top 5
#29 The Limits to Growth: 4 points, 2-4 lists, max 0 in top 5
#30 Descent of Man: 2 points (2 tenth point finishes by definition)

OK, so the spin's the thing. Note that Mein Kampf was only a Top 5 entry on AT MOST 6 lists. Thus, even if everybody mentioned it (and I doubt that), at least nine people found at least 5 books more objectionable than one that can be directly traced to the plan for the Holocaust. Or, if that isn't sufficiently inflammatory, Mein Kampf and Mao's Quotations COMBINED only had AT MOST 12 appearances in the Top Five, when they could have had 30. At least 3 people left them BOTH out of their top 5.

Of course, this is too easy. At least 10% of the respondents thought one of the major works of Charles Darwin was one of the *nine* most evil books of modern times. Well, if that's evil, then something like Albert et al.'s Molecular Biology of the Cell (unmentioned by 2 or more judges) should have to burn the eyes out of your head if you cast a glance at it.

[jml]

I think that Nietzsche is really on the list because he had a social democratic side -strong leaders should provide a social democratic state for the weak for both tactical pragmatic and aesthetic reasons... in "Human, All Too Human" I think.

And where is Ricardo? who gave us the labor theory of value? Where would Marx be without Ricardo? And where is Adam Smith, for where would Ricardo be without Smith?

And where are the Gospels? Or the Epistle of James? (paraphrasing: What good does it do to say 'I feel your pain' to a naked begger if you don't give him your cloak and share your food?) Lots of socialist pacifism there.

An odd incoherent incomplete list, IMHO.

[RSA]

I found the summary of Dewey pretty much worthless. Sure, his writing is often deadly, and it's sometimes hard to figure out what he's getting at, and educational movements of the early-to-mid 20th century made a hash out of some of his ideas related to schooling for life experience (at least according to one of my favorite books by Richard Hofstadter.) But Dewey's emphasis on skills rather than facts (i.e. rote learning) is not so easily dismissed. For example, if I remember correctly, Dewey wanted kids to learn Latin not just for its own sake but rather because learning Latin inculcates skills and modes of thought that transfer to other subjects.

In fact, if you take out the Marx, Mao, and Hitler, you're left with readings for a not-too-bad Great Books seminar. Okay, not Great, but maybe Important. At least Idiosyncratic.

[PanJack]

The inclusion of On Liberty by JS Mill is completely shocking until you think about it. In, say, 1950 you could likely gather the most extreme liberals of the day and the most extreme conservatives of the day and they all would cite On Liberty as an important and GOOD book.

The book asserts that the individual have a complete right to think what they want and to live the life that they want (as long as such things don't cause real harm to others). Both the 1950s liberal and conservative could sign off on that idea.

But now in recent years the right wing crazies no longer accept that people have a right to think/live the way they want to. A book that says this--On Liberty--is to be banned.

In particular, to the crazies gays don't have a right to live as they want. The right-wing crazies want to use state power to keep gays from living the way gays might want to.

In this way, the current crazies have really broken with a long tradition of conservatism in the US. They are just the Taliban in business suits.

[chris]

"This is fun. Perhaps we could make a similar list of conservative books," from Fabulous Eggs (is this an upscale egg donor facility?). That is we need another list of books if you read and believe will put you so far out of reality you might as well be living on planet Republican fantasia.

[obscure]

Can a book be harmful? Rephrase as: Can advice be harmful? (Is ignorance harmful?)

And anyway, you want heretical, subversive language? Try this:

"promote the general welfare..."

***

"When Wingnuts don't read"

The only rational explanation for the attitudes on the right is "they haven't read it, and if they did they weren't paying attention."

Applies equally to the Bible & Keynes.

[rea]

"Perhaps we could make a similar list of conservative books"

I doubt that would be possible. These days, they don't seem to read anything more demanding than Coulter or Malkin. Bad books, sure, but harmful "conservative" books? [Not that these people are really conservatives . . .]

[NC Unknown]

Wasn't "What is to be Done" written by Chernyshevsky (mangled transliteration)? I know Lenin did a lot of things, but if I recall correctly, this was not his work (unless he did another book by the same title). I guess I shouldn't be surprised when the book burners don't even know who wrote what they want to burn.

[Stuart]

AHA! The truth finally comes out! You're using minions to do your web-bidding in assembling your seemingly endless string of topical, interesting, and informed links! All this time you were my hero...I envision you as some amazing speed-reader, wielding a mouse in each hand, scouring several monitors at once, soaking up all that the Internet has to offer, and passing the cream of your findings along. After all, no mere mortal could possible hold-down a job AND process this much information. My image is now shattered...CHEATER, CHEATER, CHEATER!

Keep up the good work... :)

[Vache Folle]

I propose the following substitute titles since they were the most harmful to me personally:

Jonathan Livingston Seagull (I still don't get it)
Love Story (I will never get back the wasted hours of my life)
Yertle the Turtle (subversive)
Jaws (took the joy out of swimming forever)
The Living Bible (this paraphrase banalized the Bible to death and cost me my faith)
Understanding Popular Culture (gross reification of concept of resistance)
I'm OK, You're OK ('nuff said)
The Scarsdale Diet (Saturday is very bad on this diet)
All Robert Ludlum books (made me think the feds were competent, at least at rooting out elderly Nazis, and rotted my brain)
Statecraft as Soulcraft (crap by George Will on the role of the state as soul builder)

[anne]

http://quixote.rincondelvago.com/1_6/

Don Quixote of la Mancha

He was still sleeping; so the curate asked the niece for the keys of the room where the books, the authors of all the mischief, were, and right willingly she gave them. They all went in, the housekeeper with them, and
found more than a hundred volumes of big books very well bound, and some other small ones. The moment the housekeeper saw them she turned about and ran out of the room, and came back immediately with a saucer of holy water and a sprinkler, saying, "Here, your worship, senor licentiate, sprinkle this room; don't leave any magician of the many there are in these books to bewitch us in revenge for our design of banishing them from the world."

The simplicity of the housekeeper made the licentiate laugh, and he directed the barber to give him the books one by one to see what they were about, as there might be some to be found among them that did not deserve the penalty of fire.

"No," said the niece, "there is no reason for showing mercy to any of them; they have every one of them done mischief; better fling them out of the window into the court and make a pile of them and set fire to them;
or else carry them into the yard, and there a bonfire can be made without the smoke giving any annoyance." The housekeeper said the same, so eager were they both for the slaughter of those innocents, but the curate would not agree to it without first reading at any rate the titles.

[Liberal Chris]

I really like the books that just missed the top ten. "Unsafe at Any Speed" and "Silent Spring" made the list, two books that quite literally saved millions of lives. "Origin of the Species" is another great inclusion. These people are nuts.

[anne]

http://quixote.rincondelvago.com/1_6/

"As you will," said the barber; "but what are we to do with these little books that are left?"

"These must be, not chivalry, but poetry," said the curate; and opening one he saw it was the "Diana" of Jorge de Montemayor, and, supposing all the others to be of the same sort, "these," he said, "do not deserve to be burned like the others, for they neither do nor can do the mischief the books of chivalry have done, being books of entertainment that can hurt no one."

"Ah, senor!" said the niece, "your worship had better order these to be burned as well as the others; for it would be no wonder if, after being cured of his chivalry disorder, my uncle, by reading these, took a fancy to turn shepherd and range the woods and fields singing and piping; or, what would be still worse, to turn poet, which they say is an incurable and infectious malady."

"The damsel is right," said the curate, "and it will be well to put this stumbling-block and temptation out of our friend's way.

[Tim Silman]

Funny that the only book that they could not associate in some way with liberal thought (Mein Kampf) is perhaps one of the worst (prose-wise, let's not even get into the content) books ever written, and which seemingly no one read. Everything else had actual influence. The only reason the content of Mein Kampf became influential was because Hitler was a charismatic leader and not a scholar.

[Fabulous Eggs]

"These days, they don't seem to read anything more demanding than Coulter or Malkin. Bad books, sure, but harmful "conservative" books""
>>
rea, in the circles I walk, people actually recommend these Regnery-style books to each other(Coulter, O'Reilly, Hannity, Michael Savage, "Bias," "The Bell Curve", "Reason in the Balance," "The Case for Christ" etc) or offer them up to me as "proof" against my misplaced and soggy liberal arguments. Since these books are mere tapestries of sophistry, I consider their influence on so many people (they always show up high on the NYT Bestsellers list) to indeed be very, very dangerous.

[Alderaan]

If a book says that you should question the authority of a previously established power structure, it made the list. There are two top ten books that ENCOURAGE obedience to authority, and they are devoted to evil, murderous regimes. I'm making an educated guess that the problem is that it's the WRONG KIND of authority that troubles the listmakers.

To wit:

* The Communist Manifesto (Question Capitalism)
* Mein Kampf (Obey Hitler)
* Quotations from Chairman Mao (Obey Mao)
* The Kinsey Report (Question sex mores)
* Democracy and Education (Question education)
* Das Kapital (Question Capitalism)
* The Feminine Mystique (Question gender roles)
* The Course of Positive Philosophy (Question your role in society)
* Beyond Good and Evil (Question your role in society)
* General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (Question the place of Government in the economy)

Note also the prevalence of RESEARCH books (Kinsey, Darwin, Mead) and that they are treated the same as THEORY books (Marx, Hitler).

If this same crowd picked a top 10 BEST book list, I would imagine it would look something like:

1. The Bible, King James Version (Obey God)
2. The Fountainhead (Obey Superior Men)
3. Anthem (Any cooperative action is evil)
4. Atlas Shrugged (Obey Superior Men)

etc. etc.

Am I the only one who thinks the Conservative Movement is getting a little sweaty and desperate? Coming of Age in Samoa? Silent Spring? Was this list imported from late 1964?

[Fundo the Clown]

How could they omit On the Origin of Species!? EVIL! EVIL! EVIL!

[Thomas T. Schweitzer]

How come neither the right-wing wingnuts nor the commentators included Milton's Areopagitica? Has nobody any sense of humour any more?

[Anderson]

"I think that Nietzsche is really on the list because he had a social democratic side -strong leaders should provide a social democratic state for the weak for both tactical pragmatic and aesthetic reasons... in 'Human, All Too Human' I think."

That gives them too much credit---you really think any of them has READ "Human All-Too Human"?

Walter Kaufmann, I think, said that Hitler's reading of N. never got past the titles. Same for the list-makers.

[Barry Freed]

Cripes! I see that some foolish heifer has beaten me to Jonathan Livingston Seagull. It is only a matter of time before countless millions die on behalf of that foul tome. In its stead I nominate Who Moved My Mother-Fucking Cheese? Though if I felt a bit meaner today I'd give a shout out to The Tin Drum.

[Barry Freed]

As for the most most dangerous books of the 21st century, may I suggest the obvious My Pet Goat.

[Patrick Taylor]

> If Keynes knows that long-term fiscal stimulus was
> being excused by his economic thesis, he'd be
> a-rolling in his grave.

I'm pretty sure he wouldn't, John Maynard's ashes were spread near Tilton.

[Rob T.]

I think the most appropriate answer to the list of "most harmful books" would be a list of the 10 _best_ conservative books from a liberal's point of view, which is to say books that liberals could appreciate on the basis of well-written prose, quality of reasoning, influence of the actual _ideas_ within, etc. A liberal-identified list of "harmful" books would simply play into the game of censuring and censorship that favors the right by definition. In contrast, the list I propose would demonstrate liberal respect for diversity of opinion, not to mention liberal valorizing of the intellect.

Not that I could put together such a list myself; I'm nowhere near that knowledgeable. William F. Buckley would probably make the list on the basis of stylistic elegance alone. In contrast, Ayn Rand deserves attention primarily for the influence of her ideas rather than her use of language. I suppose Barry Goldwater's _The Conscience of a Conservative_ would fall somewhere in between these two extremes. There I have to stop and leave it to others to supply further candidates.

[melior]

It has to be a parody... wouldn't the Q'uran make the #1 slot if it weren't?

[Robin]

Notice that the ostensible and daming consequences of Keynes they offer as evidence--the $8 trillion debt--was run up by Presidents Reagan through Bush II, excluding Clinton, who tried to pay it down!

And if they really want to be anti-lefty, wouldn't Bernstein's Evolutionary Socialism make more sense, as the first articulation of reformist ideology which has managed to achieve power in much of the world, certainly more so than Gramsci!

It's sad, not least because it suggests that the Right is becoming more stupid--where's Michael Oakeshott when you need him.

[Pancho Villa]

'Should also include:

Krugman/Obsfeld 'International Economics' - co-written by a Communist'
Not Communist, but Realist!

[Andrew Steele]

A list like this begs the counterfactual question: How would history have unfolded had any one of these books not been written?

Did the publishing of "Mein Kampf" or "Quotations from Chairman Mao" really change history? It seems to me these books by political authors are not terribly important. Their publication is more likely a consequence of their writers' political success, rather than a cause of any major developments.

Books by intellectuals are harder to judge. Ideas have consequences, certainly. But a book like Kinsey's isn't so much important for the technical details of it as for the fact that it opened a whole new subject to open discussion.

And when considering other serious books, such as Keynes's, the implication of the Human Events list would seem to be that intellectuals shouldn't push the boundaries of an established discipline. They shouldn't make arguments, on the chance that all or part of it might inspire bad behavior.

[Harold]

They limit themselves to books written in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, else, no doubt they would include, Kant, Hegel, Locke, Tom Paine, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Not to mention Voltaire, Montaigne and Rousseau.

As it is, I am surprised they omitted to include Emerson, Whitman, Fuller, and Thoreau. I guess they didn't dare.

What they seem to object to in Dewey is his belief that democracy requires an educated, questioning electorate.

I agree that Ayn Rand and Protocols of the Elders of Zion ought to be included in any list of harmful books(Rand for her atrocious prose style as much as for her simple-minded ethos of selfishness.) And what about Arthur de Gobineau, the father of "scientific" racism (The Inequality of Human Races, c. 1856)? There were also a slew of medical books on the inferiority of women and the harmfulness of masturbation. And Luther Emmett Holt's 1894 book The Care and Feeding of Children, which advised that children not pick up or embrace their children? I'm sure there are others, deservedly forgotten now, as Margaret Mead, Betty Friedan, and Rachel Carson, Ralph Nader, et al. will never be.

[NBarnes]

I've figured it out! I know why this list is the way it is. The answer is that the list is compliled by Straussians and their intellectual hangers-on. If the list is basically Straussian in nature, then, yes, no doubt they do think that 'The Kinsey Report' is a horrific book that needs to be supressed for the good of mankind. The screaming anti-intellecutalism of the list becomes entirely explicable if you remember the nature of Straussian social thinking.

The fact that Straussianism is very nearly the WORK OF SATAN and Straussians ought to have no business in US public discourse is another matter entirely. The proper thing to throw a drowning Straussian is an anvil.

[harold]

I meant parents not pick up ... not children not pick up -- sorry.

I don't think it is a Straussian list, actually, except insofar as Strauss was a rightwinger who criticized Hitler "from the right." It is just a run of the mill conservative list featuring time-honored RW buggaboos and smear targets.

Curiously, the so-called Great Books curriculum was also rightwing in orientation though in a less stupid way. It omitted women writers (except one book each by Jane Austen and George Eliot, if I remember right) along with all lyric poetry. It's proponents, who were sort of Cold Warriors, believed that the great books contained eternal verities that didn't require historical background or context.

[Julian Elson]

Tim Silman, are the Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, Quotation from Chairman Mao, and Beyond Good and Evil associated with liberal thought?

[tjallen]

Many of the books in the list cause/admit doubt about Bible-based religion. The list is reminiscent of the old Catholic Index, but from a Literalist Christian perspective.

Some of these books are like modern-day Socrates - denying the customary gods and corrupting the youth of Athens. If Socrates and his opinions can be "dangerous", so can books that challenge the "standard opinions." Challenge is key here, bringing into question and doubt the articles held by faith. Reason opposed to faith brings with it fear, and lists like these are just a sign of fear.

Books like these show the emperor has no clothes.

[bi]

Julian Elson: in the minds of those wingnuts, yes.

Here's my list. I swear, I've read at least one really bad sentence from each of these books... :)

1. Ayn Rand's _The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought_
2. Jef Raskin's _The Humane Interface_
3. _Social Text_ #46/47
4. Ludwig von Mises' _Epistemological Problems of Economics_
5. Eric Raymond's _The Art of Unix Programming_
6. Robert Pirsig's _Zen and the Art of Motorcyclze Maintenance_
7. L. Ron Hubbard's _A History of Man_
8. Jean Baudrillard's _America_
9. Fred Brooks' _The Mythical Man-Month_
10. Wallace Ward's _Neo-Tech Advantages_

[WH]

I would fully expect some wingnuts to put 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' down in this list of harmful books.

[Bruce Garrett]

I suppose it's too late for me to nominate "The C Programming Language" by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie for the evil book list...?

[Jamisia]

Evil books... hmm.. the only thing I can come up with is Camille Paglia's "Sexual Personae". (what really motivated/motivates all those writers/poets/western civ.)

Bad books are only those that are unreadable, which depends on personal taste. I for example find George Reisman's "Capitalism" unreadable. "Das Kapital" too I found unreadable and likewise for "On Liberty". Nietzsche is tough, but do-able. The same applies to Kant...

[bryan]

The ten most dangerous Conservative books:

1. The wit of wisdom and George Bush
2. Devices of torture, how the Left attempted to castrate the Fifth amendment and keep americans from owning devices for causing extreme pain.
3. Sex: don't do that.
4. I can't stop thinking of Gay men and how they plan on destroying our world by having hot gay sex with me.
5. If your kids do drugs you have the right to spank them to death, a personal revelation.
6. Castrating women, why maude won't make pie.
7. Dick Cheney laughs at jokes
8. RUMSFELD: he smells like the name!
9. By the grace of the president's balls, a harrowing tale of not listening to a liberal quote statistics.
10. The Karl Rove exercise book.

[Serafim]

Books kill people only when they are in the hands of stupid people!

[eddie]

Interesting info.

[Michael Levy]

Proof Satan Wrote Parts of The Bible by Michael Levy

Religious Christians, Jews and Muslims live by the word of God in their holy books. They fear hell and damnation and the wrath of God. Their reasoning and logic states that acts such as murder, jealousy, anger and revenge are deadly sins that human beings commit and if they do not repent they will burn in hell.

There are many passages in the bible and other holy books that clearly state that God is revengeful, jealous, angry, and delivers plagues that kill babies. Theses are all deadly sins and God cannot commit sins or he will burn in hell. Also, it would be considered blaspheme by religious peoples logic to call God a sinner.

Religious people believe in the devil who they say entices weak human beings into sins such as jealousy, revenge and anger. Consequently, it must have been the devil that put the ideas of Gods evil deeds into the mind of the sages that wrote the bible and other holy books, not God.

Religious people recognize Satan commits sins and God delivers love and joy. Beyond any doubt there is the proof positive, that by religious peoples belief systems, only Satan could have pinned sin onto God in the form of words that projects God being revengeful and jealous. When the false mask of Satan's fear is taken away from Gods image, religious humanity is presented with a God that is good. When the sin of fear is removed from Gods word all wars will cease in Gods name.

Michael Levy, is the author of seven books, a mystical poet, inspirational philosopher and wellness/healthy living speaker. His latest books are "The Joys of Live Alchemy" and "Worry Causes Wrinkles" which help a person to change dark negative situations into beautiful colorful positive actions that bring de-lights on the darkest of days.
http://www.pointoflife.com/