John Dewey!! Shield your eyes!!!
HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE :: Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries This is just sad, pathetic actually. And note how they slipped Darwin into the honorable mentions. This sort of discourse is no better than the politically correct crapola taught in todays top colleges. And besides, where is Women are from Venus, Men are From Mars? I’m surprised Lady Chatterly’s Lover isn’t listed.
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.
Found by P. Saffo
A brief response to some of the points made:
1. The list is the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. The Bible and The Koran were written before then, so they’re off the table for those wishing to stay on-topic.
2. Steve (#3) seems to imply that the purpose of the list is to get people to avoid these books. But then Chris (#12) calls the list hypocritical for including Amazon links for easy purchasing. You can’t have it both ways, guys. Sorry.
3. To Mike (#9): I only needed to point out #1 and #2 to make my point. No sense in re-hashing the entire list.
4. In #13, some fellow who’s afraid to use his own name evidently has an “Ann Coultier” fixation.
The creators of this list could care less about any of these books beyond how they can be used to herd the weak minded or those consumed with hate in whatever direction that will benefit them personally.
It is ironic they would even bother to make the list given the chances of anyone who would buy into their bovine feces actually reading anything from the list.
Their website illustrates the need for bullshit meter to be attached to every homepage.
It doesn’t say most controversial books, it says most harmful. I have no idea what’s in On Liberty, but my impression is that Dewey’s education theories are part of what has led to the disastrous system today. Ditch phonics for Whole Word reading might not have been is book, but he started the trend of new theories and putting ‘experts’ in charge.
As harmful as some of these ideas were when put into practice, what seems truly unfortunate is that perhaps they were also necessary.
It seems Humans and the Human Race don’t really learn until we’re whalloped upside the head. We have to make and live our own mistakes, as an entire species as well as individuals.
Reminds me of Hitchhiker’s Guide and the idea that we’re just here to test someone else’s theory.
Maybe we’re here to test the efficacy of Free Will.
In regards to all the Bible-slamming here, everyone seems to be missing the real point. Yes many people have been killed because of MISUSE of the Bible, but not because of following what it really says. Anyone here seriously believe Jesus would have condoned the Spanish Inquisition or the many Catholic-Protestant wars or the Holocaust? The people perpetrating such horrors certainly never had a servant’s heart. However, the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf are harmful when used as intended. Big difference. In fact, more people were killed in China in the 20th century simply because they were Christians than in all previous centuries over the entire world. They followed the Bible and were the victims of harm, not the perpetrators.
Tom,
“4. In #13, some fellow who’s afraid to use his own name evidently has an “Ann Coultier” fixation.”
Guilty!!!! That is if Tom is you TRUE name?
You caught me! It’s really Thomas . . .
Sorry Frank. Don’t buy it. Perhaps you should try actually reading the Bible (or reading it again) The Bible would equally harmful if used as stated.
“Both parties in adultery shall be executed”
-Leviticus 20:9
“If a man has sex with another man, kill them both”
-Leviticus 20:13
“He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worth, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord.”
- Hebrews 10:28-29
“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him”
- John 3.36
“Wherefore if they hand or they foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from theee: it is better for thee to entere into life with one eye, rather than having two eyees to be cast into hell fire.”
- Matthew 18:8-9
When people say that wars were fought in the name of the Bible, they mean that people justified their reasons for going to war based on various passages in the Bible.
How come books on sexology are harmful? Maybe these ppl who declared Kinsey’s book on sex should endorse female circumcision too. I wouldn’t care less for the induhviduals who judged these books if it weren’t for the fact that there IS Princeton graduate and judging from the prestige of the University I expected much much more from it’s graduates.
It is dissapointing that the only superstition a PhD can’t cure is religion.
Unsafe at any Speed killed the Corvair so it was at least a little harmful. If it advocated the gas mileage rules as well, then it certainly belongs on the list, as government numbers say the current rules have killed thousands of people a year. As for Silent Spring, that’s the one that caused DDT to be banned, and malaria cases have risen ever since.
AC CD
“Unsafe at Any Speed” killed the Corvair, AND pushed Congress to enact safety regulations for the entire industry. Very good. BTW, the Corvair wasn’t all that safe a car either, it had terrible oversteer, horrible brakes, and just plain bad suspension. By killing the car, many lives were saved.
As for any government list purporting that fuel efficiency costs lives, WHAT LIST ??? Fuel efficiency only became a priority in the 1970s with the oil crisis. Unsafe at Any Speed was published in the mid ‘60s.
Banning DDT might have allowed some malaria swamps to return, but it also saved many lives from cancer as well as kidney and liver dysfunctions, not to mention the devastation of wild life. The Bald Eagle was almost wiped out, partially because of DDT poisoning. There are other, safer pesticides available without the side effects of DDT.
For Federal Government pamphlet,
http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/publications/conserveogram/02-14.pdf
What all these books have in common is an author pulling all or part of what’s said out of their ass. Either through sheer fabrication, faulty logic, or faulty empirical science.
Of course, this is true of most good new ideas, too. There’s no way to tell in advance, so it’s important to let all new ideas out on stage, and the let the light of criticism, analysis, and real-world trials be shone upon them.
What the contributors to this list were asked to do contained two unstated steps:
1. Identify the worst most harmful theories, ideas, and trends of the last ~200 years.
2. Name the books to which the first inklings of those ideas could be traced.
That’s all.
(Notice that I didn’t include, nor do I think the original premise implied, “Exclude books for which its overall affect on society was positive.” Whether this was implied is quite debatable.)
This is not advocating virtual book burning, any more than Thomas’ identifying bad ideas in the Bible implies that he advocates burning the Bible.
Based on this selection process, I think the list of books might make more sense. Some of the blurbs for each entry mentioned or implied the bad consequences that caused the book to be included. But clearly stating the reason for each book’s inclusion, and that books were not excluded for exculpatory reasons, might have made the list less controversial. In which case John wouldn’t have posted it.
Pat, the list I am talking about is Human Events’ list. If you say Unsafe at any Speed had no effect on CAFE standards, I’ll take your word for it. However, I thoguht the reaction to high oil prices was the 55 MPH speed limit.
I doubt the Corvair was uniquely unsafe, and was probably just a convenient villain. As for safety regulations, these were the same people that insisted on mandatory airbags, and then complained when people got killed by them, just as Detroit predicted.
The case of DDT killing the bald eagle is overblown. Even if you’re right, the DDT ban hasn’t been limited to pesticides. In general, DDT manufacturing has been banned for any use, and the replacements are not effective against malaria. This is not a few swamps, this is millions dead.
I believe the National Academy of Sciences is a government agency, and the NHTSA reached the same conlusions: thousands of deaths caused by higher fuel efficiency standards. Even Ralph Nader admits that larger cars are safer.