[The Fifth Most Dangerous Book of the Past Two Centuries! Know Your Enemies! Warn Your Librarians!]I just got an email from poet Catherine Daly (you'll find her link over there at the sidebar) alerting readers to a list of THE TEN MOST HARMFUL BOOKS, as selected by judges for HUMAN EVENTS: THE NATIONAL CONSERVATIVE WEEKLY. Believe me, and Catherine, you've really got to read this. Of course, they were unable to satisfy themselves with just the top ten harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries, so there is an appendage, a list of runners up. These almost-most-harmful-texts include the works of Darwin, Freud, Fanon, Foucault, even Rachel Carson (but oddly enough, the book I review in the post beneath this is not included). To whom are these eminences secondary in the rankings of those who have damaged human society, you may ask. Why, John Dewey, John Maynard Keynes, Auguste Comte.
So go take a look at this thing. Here's a link:
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=7591
And while you're at it, take a gander at the list of judges, which includes such able close readers as Phyllis Schlafley
1 comment:
wait. hold on. seriously? okay, so the top ten make a certain amount of sense from the wingnut perspective (except for kinsey. what's so harmful about knowing that lots of dudes like gay sex?), but what's really curious is the "honorable mention" list. this is where you can truly see the wingnuttery at work, in such gems as darwin's "origin of species" (because everybody knows jesus did it), foucault's "madness and civilization" (because everybody knows ... well, i can't figure out exactly what they find wrong with this. is it that they think hosiptals are autonomous randian capitalist whatevers and therefore must be good by definition?), nader's "unsafe at any speed" (WHAT? ARE YOU F***ING KIDDING ME?), freud (i'm still reeling from that last one), and, as you point out, rachel carson. the woman who suggested that DDT might not be such a good idea. harmful. the book warning us, i mean, not the DDT. i'm going to go vomit now.
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