Re: Links

1

Bob Woodward.

Carl Bernstein.

...or jes' call 'em Woodstein, like in the movies...


Posted by: mike d | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 7:57 AM
horizontal rule
2

Sorry, fixed.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 7:59 AM
horizontal rule
3

I especially liked this:

Das Kapital forces the round peg of capitalism into the square hole of Marx's materialistic theory of history, portraying capitalism as an ugly phase in the development of human society in which capitalists inevitably and amorally exploit labor by paying the cheapest possible wages to earn the greatest possible profits.

Isn't this called "maximizing shareholder value?" Isn't it supposed to be a good thing in conservativeland?


Posted by: Chopper | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 8:19 AM
horizontal rule
4

Aren't you surprised "A Theory of Justice" wasn't on their list?

The project, however, is an interseting one. What *are* the most damaging books of the 20th century?

I would think we can agree that the major disasters of the 20th century are (in no particular order):

1. The humanitarian disaster arising from State communism

2. Nazism/state fascism leading to massacre and the second world war

3. The First World War

4. The lack of economic growth/political liberalism in the 3rd world

What books to blame? Human Events choices #1-3 seem solid. Who lost subsaharan Africa? Or can we blame that on Marx too?


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 8:55 AM
horizontal rule
5

baa : can we agree on

....

WWI

Treaty of Versailles

Rise of NASDP

....

hmm?

Subsaharan Africa? Lay it on the French and the Brits.


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:00 AM
horizontal rule
6

The Belgians?


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:02 AM
horizontal rule
7

Personally, I loved this one:

He could not have predicted 21st Century America: a free, affluent society based on capitalism and representative government that people the world over envy and seek to emulate.

My cynical mind extends that ... "and if they dont want to emulate it, they get the marine corps..." But that is possibly a tad too snarky.


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:03 AM
horizontal rule
8

Ben, I ll lay anything at Belgium's door in any weather. But I fear that the Congo isn't exactly Chad.


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:04 AM
horizontal rule
9

Don't we all agree that it is foolish, even embarrassing, to blame scholarship for things like gulags and concentration camps?


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:14 AM
horizontal rule
10

But it's so hard to draw the line from a book to an outcome, not least because the most energetic proponents of a book's ideas are so often terrible readers.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:16 AM
horizontal rule
11

And what text said. Even in a pretty clear case, like Mein Kampf, is the book really responsible for anything, or just the self-expression of the man who was?


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:17 AM
horizontal rule
12

All that said, the most damaging book of all time, kidding aside, just might be Descartes' Meditations. I will not defend this assertion.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:19 AM
horizontal rule
13

But I fear that the Congo isn't exactly Chad.

Can't say I know much about Chad, but colonialism in Congo was pretty fucking awful. Congo's resources might have stopped the Belgians from utterly destroying it, forever, but it wasn't for lack of trying.

Back to the topic, though, isn't On Liberty supposed to be a key libertarian text? Or is HEO full of the kinds of conservatives who can't stand libertarians, either? Maybe they're not all bad...


Posted by: tom | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:21 AM
horizontal rule
14

Remember Marshall McCluhan Ogged?

So just for the fun of it: The book is responsible in so far as it is the multipier of the will of an individual or group of authors. If books have no meaning on their own, how come so many end up getting burnt, or indeed put into toilets.


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:22 AM
horizontal rule
15

The book that influenced Lenin more directly was actually Chernyshevsky's What Is To Be Done?.


Posted by: ac | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:22 AM
horizontal rule
16

Tom, I so did not mean that relatively, rather only in terms of purely physical geography.

So like i said, French, Brits, Belgians...


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:23 AM
horizontal rule
17

I will not defend this assertion

Is this a Vorgeschmack of the reading group?


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:26 AM
horizontal rule
18

Mmm, Vorgeschmack.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:28 AM
horizontal rule
19

a taster, hombre... a taster.


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:29 AM
horizontal rule
20

very Austrian though, the Piefk... ahem Germans would say "Ausblick"


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:31 AM
horizontal rule
21

Jim Henley had a good post about why one shouldn't deny the possibility that books can be dangerous, though drawing causal linkages will always be difficult. In fact, it seems doubtful that causal linkages are what that list is about. The clearest example of this is that if it were about causal linkages, it would have to include books that inspired Hitler, rather than books by him.

Also, the mode of influence created by diffusion of a particular idea that Human Events would oppose (Apparently gender equality, for instance) among the general populace is going to be difficult to pin down both on the source side and on the effect side.


Posted by: washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:34 AM
horizontal rule
22

Mill's inclusion was my laugh-out-loud moment. I was half-expecting Language, Truth, and Logic to pop up...


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:41 AM
horizontal rule
23

Personally, any such list that doesn't include A Catcher in the Rye has no validity with me.


Posted by: pjs | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:58 AM
horizontal rule
24

Who lost subsaharan Africa?

Kipling?


Posted by: Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 10:19 AM
horizontal rule
25

heh? India maybe!

Hemmingway, more likely.


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 10:22 AM
horizontal rule
26

and I'll steal from Kevin's comments, because this is golden snark: (from floopmeister)

Here Nietzsche argued that men are driven by an amoral “Will to Power,” and that superior men will sweep aside religiously inspired moral rules, which he deemed as artificial as any other moral rules, to craft whatever rules would help them dominate the world around them. “Life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of the strange and weaker, suppression, severity, imposition of one’s own forms, incorporation and, at the least and mildest, exploitation,” he wrote.

Irony is dead.


Posted by: Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 10:37 AM
horizontal rule
27

or perhaps it was Hemmmingway.


Posted by: w-lfs-n for the day | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 10:38 AM
horizontal rule
28

I think the problem with baa's angle of approach is that while he is undisputably listing some of this centuries greatest tragedies, the very fact of their scale fairly prohibts any linking of causality to a mere book.


Posted by: Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 10:40 AM
horizontal rule
29

w-lfs-n for a day, fool for a lifetime.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 10:40 AM
horizontal rule
30

What an odd list. washerdreyer beat me to the point that it's difficult to claim that a book is causally dangerous (book burnings, I think, done largely because it makes a good statement of what the community dislikes, rather than because people really get poisoned by it.)

But most of those on this list don't come close to that. Mein Kampf ? The ramblings of a put-out putscher . It's not a how-to manual for Blitzkrieg. Beyond Good and Evil ? Are they saying that the 'will to power' is, um, comprehensible?

Can we be snarky and nominate the Bible? By parity of reasoning, it caused the Crusades, the Inquisition, and Bush's second term.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 10:41 AM
horizontal rule
31

It is odd that, alone of the books, the Kinsey report is not repudiated in any shape or fashion. I wonder do they believe it is prima facie ridiculous, or do they just mean that even though true, the subject is not fit for conversation?


Posted by: Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 10:47 AM
horizontal rule
32

a telling remark: theorizing that the human mind had developed beyond “theology” (a belief that there is a God who governs the universe), through “metaphysics” (in this case defined as the French revolutionaries’ reliance on abstract assertions of “rights” without a God), to “positivism,” in which man alone, through scientific observation, could determine the way things ought to be.

The singular problem with Comte, it seems, is moral atheism. And it's enough to get him on the 10-worst list covering 2 centuries.


Posted by: Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 10:54 AM
horizontal rule
33

If the editors were smart they would have trimmed the list down to the top three most dangerous books. That would cut out all the complaining.

"On Liberty" is a key Libertarian text, but not all Conservatives are Libertarians. It is almost as if some people think Mill was wrong when he said the state shouldn't prohibit actions that don't harm others.


Posted by: joe o | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 10:57 AM
horizontal rule
34

Must I say it? Ideas have consequences. All men are created equal -- that's a good idea! Capitalism immiserates the proletariat -- that's a bad idea! No one is trying to claim that "Mein Kampf" is a 'but for' condition of holocaust, but the ideas contained therein had an obviously negative effect. Sheesh!

"Language, Truth, and Logic" was on my ballot, Fontana, but I couldn't get a second vote from Schlaffley.

And Weiner, don't think I didn't notice you. All I have to say is: intercepted!


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 11:31 AM
horizontal rule
35

WTF? Why this unwonted aggression? Must we bring up the Football Yankees every time I comment?


Posted by: Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 11:35 AM
horizontal rule
36

You attack Kipling, I go nuclear.


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 11:39 AM
horizontal rule
37

Hey, you didn't hear me. FOOTBALL YANKEES. Nuclear that.


Posted by: Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 11:40 AM
horizontal rule
38

I accept and understand the temporary alliance with the Dark Side. Also, I always liked Bernie Williams.


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 11:41 AM
horizontal rule
39

And, you know, "Non-Europeans are ignorant people, half-devil and half-child, who we must civilize if it kills them," is not such a great idea, effects-wise.


Posted by: Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 11:41 AM
horizontal rule
40

Mezzo-mezzo. Got some awesome tea out of it.


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 11:43 AM
horizontal rule
41

OK, you win.


Posted by: Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 11:44 AM
horizontal rule
42

Can we be snarky and nominate the Bible?

I had the same thought, but alas, it misses the cutoff date by about 18 or 19 centuries.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 11:51 AM
horizontal rule
43

Ideas have consequences, but some Conservatives have a Chaos theory model of Ideas. New ideas are dangerous in unpredictable ways. Society works now, but could get unglued in some unknown way if blacks/women/gays get rights.

Sometimes this type of thinking has a point. The communist manifesto had some pretty unforseen and evil effects. But, usually Conservatives are just scaredy cats.


Posted by: Joe O | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 11:55 AM
horizontal rule
44

Scardy-catness in defense of liberty is no vice!


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:07 PM
horizontal rule
45

Except that On Libertyis a vice. ;-)

apostropher, what if we go with a later edition of the Bible? Do later revisions/second editions count for these works?

And I'm changing my nomination to Foundations of Illocutionary Logic. Gah!


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:14 PM
horizontal rule
46

Capitalism immiserates the proletariat -- that's a bad idea!

Is it? Or an accurate portrayal of the effects of capitalism, especially at the time the Manifesto was written? I know for a fact that I wouldn't want to work in a 19th century factory, especially at the wages offered/hours required.


Posted by: Chopper | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:17 PM
horizontal rule
47

Cala, you are right. At least, that was the book that was most harmful to the theory of speech acts. It's my opinion that the reason philosophers don't do more work on speech acts is that no one wants to work in a field that requires familiarity with a book that is so goddamn boring.


Posted by: Philosopher Wearing an Extremely Lame Disguise, Who You Can Identify Quickly, No Doubt | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:17 PM
horizontal rule
48

To seriously respond to Matt, "colonialism" is an interesting case. While all colonial projects were morally compromised, and some were frankly brigandage of the most murderous kind, I don't think it exactly fits with the rise of fascism, state communism as a complete and unredeemed disaster.


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:22 PM
horizontal rule
49

I meant to add earlier:

I also especially like that they linked to the Amazon pages for the books in question using the link that credits them for any sales made through that link. "If you're going to buy this godless commie faggotry, but it through us!"


Posted by: Chopper | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:23 PM
horizontal rule
50

Does your philosophy disguise come with a mask?


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:24 PM
horizontal rule
51

Whom we must civilize, Kipling$\_{Weiner}$.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:27 PM
horizontal rule
52

go with a later edition

Yeah, somebody ought to do something about that damned NIV. Years ago, I had a very religious co-worker (I once asked him if he had a Bible in his car to settle a point of biblical trivia and he replied in complete earnestness, "A soldier is never without his sword.") who was vociferously committed to the King James version and viewed the newer translations as theological Near Beer. One of the funniest things I ever heard him say was that NIV stood for "Nearly Inspired Version."


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:27 PM
horizontal rule
53

To respond equally seriously to baa, I think it does. Or perhaps it depends on the definition of "unredeemed"--but I think (without, I must admit, doing much research) that Africa's sorry state has to be laid at the feet of colonialism and its aftermath, and that that's possibly as bad as state Communism and fascism--fewer deaths till now, but it seems to be still with us.

Also, Austro (in 5) really deserves credit for nominating colonialism.

150 years from now we may be nominating Tech Central Station's global warming coverage (wrong century again, I know). Or whatever publications it was that were most influential in fighting the promotion of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS.


Posted by: Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:29 PM
horizontal rule
54

51: Don't understand your techspeak, but would you believe I considered and rejected making that change?

See also this, which I guess casts doubt on the DE/Dahlia connection.


Posted by: Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:31 PM
horizontal rule
55

The idea that books are in of themselves dangerous is as dangerous as any of the works we are discussing.

Ideas have consequences, but as has been said, they are almost entirely unforseeable. So to judge academic works by their unforseeable consequences seems a bit silly, no? It doesn't really tell us anything going forward.

I demand this thread be burned.


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:35 PM
horizontal rule
56

In LaTeX's math mode, which is entered with a '$' and exited by its mate, \_{} is the command to put the (parsed, set) text between the braces as a subscript to whatever precedes. I wanted: Kipling-sub-Weiner.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:36 PM
horizontal rule
57

If dropped from an overpass, the OED would be a very dangerous book indeed. Also, this one, this one, and this one all go without saying.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:41 PM
horizontal rule
58

If the Civil War hadn't cut their influence, I'd nominate some of the American defenses of slavery for the list. By the 1850s a significant number of people were arguing that slavery was not just a necessary evil but a positive good and that the Atlantic slave trade should be re-opened. At the most extreme George Fitzhugh, in Sociology for the South, or, the Failure of Free Society argued that slavery itself should spread around the world.

The crazy thing about some of the pro-slave advocates like Fitzhugh is that they were some of the early 19th century Americans most sympathetic to socialism and communism. Whole sections of their writings are devoted to critiques of capitalism and its labor relations.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:42 PM
horizontal rule
59

Matt McIrvin has shown up here his own damn self on occasion, text, but 55 immediately put me in mind of this.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:44 PM
horizontal rule
60

So, I *defintely* agree that the state of subsaharan Africa is a disaster of world-historical magnitude. It's just that I think it's a harder call to connect that directly to colonialism (harder, at least, than the connection between dead kulaks and Leninism). And colonialism isn't just about Africa. If I am a citizen of a 3rd world former English colony, and you put me behind a veil of ignorance, I don't really know how I would feel about colonialism. With some information, worse in 1840 than in 1980, worse if I'm male than female, worse in Kenya than in Singapore, I suspect.


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:50 PM
horizontal rule
61

McIrvin's bit was well put. I propose a discussion of the world's most dangerous works of art, immediately followed by a discussion of how to forever purge the world of said works.

Looking at naked boobies at the Louvre must have caused Jacobinism, or something.


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:54 PM
horizontal rule
62

eb; because they were agrarian economies whose fortunes suffered from capitalistic modes of production.


Posted by: Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:55 PM
horizontal rule
63

baa, I'd like to draw your attention to my 46 and invite a response. Also, I'd like to note that you're conflating Marxism and Leninism. Last, I'd like to note that you're correct about colonialism not being limited to Africa, and get your take on how much responsibility it bears for the crimes of Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, et al. in relation to communist ideology?


Posted by: Chopper | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:56 PM
horizontal rule
64

Without sounding overly banal, of course ideas are important and some of them can be dangerous to certain points of view. People are influenced by things they read; sometimes that influence is a bad thing. To be even more banal, there's a reason I think it would be bad to read a child neo-Nazi propaganda as bedtime stories: they're bad ideas that I don't want in that child's head.

That said.... there's a big difference between acknowledging books' ability to play on the emotion and disseminate false information and making a list that is basically A bunch of Books that Disagree With Our Conservative Ideology, that are therefore Dangerous in some Unspecified Non-Causal Way.

Well, come on. If that's the only standard, let's nominate Thomas Paine's Common Sense. Or Uncle Tom's Cabin -- from the perspective of a Southern slave owner, that certainly is dangerous. (So dangerous that I believe there was a Southern rebuttal called 'Aunt So-and-so's Cabin'.)

(memory gone.)


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 12:57 PM
horizontal rule
65

Michael: Yes, but the logical explanation doesn't make it much less crazy-seeming when you read it. If you were reading the following passage, for example, would your first guess be that it was written by a pro-slave advocate?

It begets another war in the bosom of society still more terrible than this. It arrays capital against labor. Every man is taught by political economy that it is meritorious to make the best bargains one can. In all old countries, labor is superabundant, employers less numerous than laborers; yet all the laborers must live by the wages they receive from the capitalists. The capitalist cheapens their wages; they compete with and underbid each other, for employed they must be on any terms. This war of the rich with the poor and the poor with one another, is the morality which political economy inculcates.

Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:05 PM
horizontal rule
66

Also on the topic of early sources, a friend of mine once explained to me why he thought Herder and the ideas growing out of romantic nationalism were to blame for most of the horrors of the 19th and 20th centuries. I could see his point about the way the ideas had been employed, but couldn't really understand how Herder himself was the man to blame.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:10 PM
horizontal rule
67

Umm, a manual on how to create a bomb is not dangerous? Only the person who potentially might become a bomber?

A gun is not in itself dangerous, only the maniac using it?

Is this what we're saying?

Text, somehow I get the feeling that you're mixing up the notion that ideas (and hence their multipliers or medium of transport - books) must be free with a denial that they have consequences.

There is also a difference between bad and dangerous, no? (Good, the word used in the post is "Harmful" which again can be different to bad). I think it is fairly clear that a book can be dangerous - to a received wisdom, a received oder, a social class a democracy.

ac was posting about the effect of Paine in England. Tell me, please, that was not dangerous.


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:15 PM
horizontal rule
68

amazing how a thread can take off in the time it takes to get home from work and put the kids to bed.


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:17 PM
horizontal rule
69

Only just now did I click to Drum and see that he has the best counter-snark.

Austro, from ac's post it looks like Paine did nothing but good in the UK. I mean, don't we like the Reform Bill?


Posted by: Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:18 PM
horizontal rule
70

See!

Good ... Bad..D,angerous... perspective is the key.

I contend that Paine did good, but was in his time, dangerous. You simply have to ask "to whom". But to contend that the work was of no danger seems to me to reduce it to its form, not substance.


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:23 PM
horizontal rule
71

Austro, fair enough, I've been sort of glib. I guess my argument is that books written for academic purposes (or artistic purposes), though they may have disastrous consequences, shouldn't be judged according to those consequences in the same way that a gun is judged in terms of the consequences it creates.

There are several reasons for this. First, it is hard to judge what the consequences of an academic work might be. Not only were the consequences we are talking about mostly unintentional, they were unforseeable. What kind of sense does it make to judge works for unforseeable consequences? You might analogize that to instituting an absolute liability rule for personal injuries, regardless of the level of care.

There is a second category of books, such as Mien Kampf, perhaps, that were neither academic nor artistic, but prescribed harms that were later enacted. These might seem problematic, except that they seem to embody the sorts of harms that the writers were going to enact anyway, or in some cases, had already enacted. That Mao book -- does anyone think that book in and of itself caused any real damage?

Finally, I just think it's a bad idea to set out a list of dangerous books, for the reason that it is likely to become an exercise in vindicating one's own dogma. Even if that's not what you're trying to do, which can't be said for the list we are talking about, it is the likely result.

And yes, the whole "free market of ideas" blah blah blah argument. No, don't read nazi literature to your children.


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:30 PM
horizontal rule
72

If you mean dangerous in a neutral way -- dangerous to someone -- that's fine, although that isn't quite how the list we are talking about was set up.


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:32 PM
horizontal rule
73

don't read nazi literature to your children

How else am I going to explain why we're out shooting Gypsies on the weekends?


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:43 PM
horizontal rule
74

baa, I'd like to draw your attention to my 46 and invite a response. Also, I'd like to note that you're conflating Marxism and Leninism. Last, I'd like to note that you're correct about colonialism not being limited to Africa, and get your take on how much responsibility it bears for the crimes of Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, et al. in relation to communist ideology?

Sorry, missed that there. Yeah, no one wants to work in an industrial age factory. Certainly not me. But I also don't want to work in subsistence agriculture. I think there's little doubt that market capitalism raises all boats, and that Marx did not predict that basically capitalist countries would see enormous improvements in the standard of living of the working class.

On Leninism and Marxism -- true! Marx > Lenin by a long way. But there's just no doubt Marxism influenced Lenin and other state socialists to an enormous degree. I realize the whole enterprise of tieing books to horrendous events is something of an inherently bogus exercise, but it's bogus in a fun way, no? Don't we think Uncle Tom's Cabin, as Cala notes above, belongs in the pantheon of virtuous books?

On the last point. I guess had Cambodia avoided all contact with France, Pol Pot never would have gone to Paris and learned about communism. And maybe too Cambodia would have had a native political structure strong enough to resist a nutcase insurgency. Not that avoiding European colonialism is any guarantee of that, of course...


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:43 PM
horizontal rule
75

Finally, I just think it's a bad idea to set out a list of dangerous books, for the reason that it is likely to become an exercise in vindicating one's own dogma. Even if that's not what you're trying to do, which can't be said for the list we are talking about, it is the likely result.

I agree with you fully. One of the things I really do not admire about Austria is that "Mein Kampf" is banned (here it is the equivalent of the bomb manual). I would never read it to my 6 year old, but I shall make damn sure that when he is 16 he can read it if he wants.

I also agree about the way the list was set up.

I just happen to believe that "books" are about the most dangerous objects you can give a person.

As an aside, the issue of ideas and consequences on he political/philosophical level reminds me acutely of the way Physics (my training) was dragged through the cultural mud for enabling the bomb. The difference is that physicists worked on the programme. Still does not make Physics intrisically bad or for that matter "dangerous" in the sense you mean.

I also apologise for the punctuation in those comments.


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:44 PM
horizontal rule
76

don't read nazi literature to your children

My Nietsche, Heidegger and Heisenberg are kept under lock and key. The Wagner records will only be played when they are of age and as for the Niebelungen...


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:46 PM
horizontal rule
77

Pol Pot never would have gone to Paris and learned about communism.

One wonders where Lon Nol came into contact with the Pentagon. And just where did the Pathet Lao learn there stuff?


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:49 PM
horizontal rule
78

The Wagner records will only be played when they are of age

There's a book in which a sign of the end of the world is an Italian radio station's broadcasting of the complete works of Wagner...


Posted by: DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:50 PM
horizontal rule
79

*Nietzsche*


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:50 PM
horizontal rule
80

All that said, the most damaging book of all time, kidding aside, just might be Descartes' Meditations. I will not defend this assertion.

No, no, no. And no. Saint Augustine's Confessions, and second worst isn't even close.


Posted by: aretino | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:50 PM
horizontal rule
81

*sigh* their!!

I think I need either coffee or alcohol.


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:52 PM
horizontal rule
82

both, Austro, both.


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:53 PM
horizontal rule
83

In terms of turning decent, bright young Americans into lobotomized cultists, no weapon is more effective than the novels of Ayn Rand.


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:57 PM
horizontal rule
84

Right, Irish coffee it is.

So where is ac?


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:57 PM
horizontal rule
85

she left the party with a lesbian swede, promising not to tell us about it.


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 1:57 PM
horizontal rule
86

we might just have to troll her site 'til she relents on that.

I note that SB's question nr 1 received no reply.


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 2:00 PM
horizontal rule
87

#64: Cala: Probably this:

Aunt Phillis's Cabin; or, Southern Life As It Is Mary Henderson Eastman [Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co, 1852]


Posted by: DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 2:08 PM
horizontal rule
88

In terms of turning decent, bright young Americans into lobotomized cultists, no weapon is more effective than the novels of Ayn Rand.

SB: One can reverse the effects by bashing them over the heads with said novels until their brains bleed. Crude, but effective.


Posted by: DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 2:10 PM
horizontal rule
89

*Nietzsche*

Gesundheit!


Posted by: Chopper | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 2:19 PM
horizontal rule
90

until their brains bleed

I tried this and it yielded no detectable differences.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 2:21 PM
horizontal rule
91

One can reverse the effects by bashing them over the heads with said novels until their brains bleed.

I get it--like homeopathic medicine! Since, that is, anyone buying into that loony crap must already have had a stroke to begin with.


Posted by: Chopper | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 2:22 PM
horizontal rule
92

Dankeschön.

Apo: Maybe you really should have used the OED.


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 2:26 PM
horizontal rule
93

On a side note, throw some more vibes my way in about 35 minutes, won't you? Round 2 is in just a bit. Walking out the door...now!


Posted by: Chopper | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 2:27 PM
horizontal rule
94

anyone buying into that loony crap must already have had a stroke to begin with

But the sad thing is, Chopper, it's not true. Woe! So many clear-thinking youngsters abandoning themselves to Atlas-Shruggery!


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 2:28 PM
horizontal rule
95

Break a leg!

Oh Gawd... you mean I have to like, focus?


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 2:30 PM
horizontal rule
96

D'edtrix: Thanks!

Apostropher: Obviously, you tell them, 'For target practice for when we have to defend against the Jihad.' Duh.

General: The list claims to be about Harmful books. This is an interesting claim, but it seems to be a false one, as the Harm ranges from ludicrous (Dewey leading to... Clinton? As a Harm?) to dubious (e.g., Mein Kampf becomes popular in terms of required-copies-sold only after Hitler takes power, Marx requires a fair amount of tinkering to get to the Soviet Union, usw..)

So then we're left with Bad, or Dangerous. And that's just not all that interesting, as Dangerous seems to come along with 'to whom' and 'to whom' here is very narrowly defined.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 2:49 PM
horizontal rule
97

So where is ac?

This seems like a day when it's more fun to be talked about, than talked to.

But on Paine - he was someone who intended to cause an insurrection, who intended greater consequences than he actually achieved. And re 69, it's true he did good, but would he would have done less good if everyone in the whole country had actually listened to him. I'd say it's a case of radicalism and reaction combining to produce a reasonably good result.



Posted by: ac | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 2:50 PM
horizontal rule
98

mmmm. I'd argue that often we need people who intend much more than would be good to accomplish anything good at all--for some reason I'm thinking of John Brown, though that's wrong in a million ways--but it's hard to distinguish that from people who start rivers of blood flowing, or maybe the difference between those people and people who start rivers of blood isn't necessarily in their writings but in the soil their writings land on. And I admit I know nothing about Paine.


Posted by: Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 2:56 PM
horizontal rule
99

Yes, John Brown is tricky. But wouldn't argue with the general statement.


Posted by: ac | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 2:59 PM
horizontal rule
100

And maybe too Cambodia would have had a native political structure strong enough to resist a nutcase insurgency. Not that avoiding European colonialism is any guarantee of that, of course...

Liberia may have avoided European colonialism, but it was founded by settlers from abroad under the auspices of something called the American Colonization Society...


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 2:59 PM
horizontal rule
101

It occurs to me that we've stopped noting when we reach 100. We don't even do it ironically any more.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 3:25 PM
horizontal rule
102

102!


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 3:27 PM
horizontal rule
103

So where is ac?

This seems like a day when it's more fun to be talked about, than talked to.

The alternative is that you were missed, hmmm?

re 98: isn't that just saying that one needs balances to prevent harm?


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 3:30 PM
horizontal rule
104

I confess to noting ruefully that the chance for an ironic call at 100 had passed. Was it not back in March, that someone declared 100 to be passe but that 200 is still worth noting?


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 3:32 PM
horizontal rule
105

#31

Michael -

The reports were designed to give a scientific gloss to the normalization of promiscuity and deviancy.

I suspect that was meant to be their prime criticism. After all, we know that science is bad, used to "normalise" all sorts of anti-Christian beliefs: that pesky evolution thing, global warming...


Posted by: DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 3:34 PM
horizontal rule
106

someone declared 100 to be passe but that 200 is still worth noting?

Or we could just start noting prime numbers after 100, in which case we should have already noted 101 and 103.

To come: 107, 109, 113, 127, 131, 137...


Posted by: DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 3:40 PM
horizontal rule
107

It was many and many a year ago

in the life of our own ac,

That a woman she met whom we now know

as a really hot lesbian swede,

And a party they left with no other thought than to

[poem left imcomplete because ac won't tell us what happened]


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 3:43 PM
horizontal rule
108

Someone has to create mystery around here.


Posted by: ac | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 3:46 PM
horizontal rule
109

To offset the Harry Potter wang discourse.


Posted by: ac | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 3:48 PM
horizontal rule
110

When I was ___, I once ___ a ____ in ___ just to ___ it ____ in a vat of boiling oil.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 3:50 PM
horizontal rule
111

eddifying, aint it?


Posted by: Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 3:50 PM
horizontal rule
112

When I was an infant, my uncaring stepfather cast me into the Baltic to sink beneath the icy waves. Twenty years later, I returned from the wilderness to exact my revenge. I wear his tongue around my neck as a charm against fear.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 4:15 PM
horizontal rule
113

Keyser Soze everyone! Welcome!


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 4:20 PM
horizontal rule
114

It's from a 7-year-old issue of The Harvard Lampoon.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 4:23 PM
horizontal rule
115

I can't tell if that's meant to make it more or less normal.


Posted by: washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 4:38 PM
horizontal rule
116

The greatest trick Ben w-lfs-n ever pulled was convincing the world he wasn't insane.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 4:45 PM
horizontal rule
117

has that trick been fully actualized?


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 4:48 PM
horizontal rule
118

The harvard lampoon -- there's a dangerous periodical. It undermines the ability of anyone else to get employed on "Futurama"


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 5:32 PM
horizontal rule
119

The harvard lampoon...undermines the ability of anyone else to get employed on "Futurama"

Another thing which has that effect is Futurama being cancelled.


Posted by: washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 5:35 PM
horizontal rule
120

Tying up the question of "Who lost Africa" and books GOPista's consider dangerous, I'd point out that, as far as US policy is concerned, Africa is and was not lost---the raw materials are flowing from it just fine, the nations and citizens are at no real risk of hurting America, so things have worked out just as they should. Moreover this is not even accidental; the US, post WW2 deliberately engineered the world this way.

As for the book --- read Confessions of An Economic Hitman by John Perkins

(you can hear the gist of what he is saying here)

http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2005/Perkins.html

Also be sure to check out

http://www.lewrockwell.com/wanniski/wanniski53.html

where Jude Wanniski of all people

(a) agrees that what John Perkins says is pretty much true and then

(b) tells us that the only solution is for the US to return to the gold standard.


Posted by: Maynard Handley | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 6:58 PM
horizontal rule
121

All right, the vibes seem to be working--Round 2 seems to have gone swimmingly as well. Or at least, when you're being walked to the door, having the interviewer tell you "I'm sure we'll be in touch very soon." would seem to be a good sign, no?

I might buy into this hippy shit yet.


Posted by: Chopper | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 7:56 PM
horizontal rule
122

Awesome!

Do you have any enemies? We could use our vibokinesis to give them scurvy, or maybe hangnails.


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:28 PM
horizontal rule
123

vibokinesis

It's gotta be "intercessory vibrations."


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:32 PM
horizontal rule
124

I think the list should have included Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi which shows what it is like to live in a world dominated by one kind of religion. If people read this book, they might not want a theocracy. It is a clear-sighted, honest and scary book. Of course, telling the truth *is* very dangerous. Books that make people think and question and look things up are the most dangerous things on earth. Fahrenheit 451 comes to mind by Ray Bradbury. Check out HR bill 2295 by Jones that wants Fed. gov. money to be kept from elementary schools who do not have a community group of parents to review school library purchases. (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h109-2295)


Posted by: cfk | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:34 PM
horizontal rule
125

intercessory vibrations

Certainly, in a Catholic theology of vibratory communion. That would make us, collectively, the patron saints of rapid periodic motion. Our feast day is July 18.


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:40 PM
horizontal rule
126

?


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 9:50 PM
horizontal rule
127

Picked at random. Do you know of a day more jiggly than the rest?


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 10:01 PM
horizontal rule
128

I nominate September 14, which is both appropriate and shrouded in mystery..


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 10:06 PM
horizontal rule
129

Excellent! A fine day for the contemplation of oscillation.


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 06- 2-05 10:20 PM
horizontal rule