The Most Dangerous Books. . .
By Several dissertations could be written on this alone. Via Brad Delong.
HUMAN EVENTS asked a panel of 15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders to help us compile a list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Each panelist nominated a number of titles and then voted on a ballot including all books nominated. A title received a score of 10 points for being listed No. 1 by one of our panelists, 9 points for being listed No. 2, etc. Appropriately, The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, earned the highest aggregate score and the No. 1 listing.
And the list:
1. The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx
2. Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler
3. Quotations from Chairman Mao, Mao Zedong
4. The Kinsey Report, Alfred Kinsey
5. Democracy and Education, John Dewey
6. Das Kapital, Kral Marx
7. The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
8. The Course of Positive Philosophy, Auguste Comte
9. Beyond Good and Evil, Friederich Nietzsche
10. General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, John Maynard Keynes
11. The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich
12. What is to be Done, V.I. Lenin
13. Authoritarian Personality, Theodor Adorno
14. On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
15. Beyond Freedom and Dignity, B.F. Skinner
16. Reflections on Violence, Georges Sorel
17. The Promise of American Life, Herbert Croly
18. Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin
19. Madness and Civilization, Michel Foucault
20. Soviet Communism: A New Civilization, Sidney and Beatrice Webb
21. Coming of Age in Samoa, Margaret Mead
22. Unsafe at Any Speed, Ralph Nader
23. Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
24. Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci
25. Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
26. Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon
27. Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud
28. The Greening of America, Charles Reich
29. The Limits to Growth, Club of Rome
30. Descent of Man, Charles Darwin
Oh, where to start. . .
It’s interesting to see that John Dewey is more dangerous than V.I. Lenin. Also interesting is the critique of Dewey (he suggested that endowing children with hard knowledge was secondary to developing their democratic character) in light of the inclusion of Darwin. I guess hard facts are only important when used in the service of ideology, which makes the inclusion of several others quite odd. And why Ralph Nader; it’s not as if the conservative philosophical position is deeply tied to the safety features of the Chevrolet Corvair. Or maybe it is, if you’re a 21st century wingnut. I find the inclusion of Mill odd as well, in light of the conservative co-optation of so much liberal rhetoric and in consideration of Mill’s apology for the Western imperial project. I guess that espousing freedom of thought is anti-conservative. . .
Good commentary on the list from Michael at Here’s What’s Left.