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Open Forum Friday: 10 Books That Screwed Up The World
Last year that stalwart bastion of fine literature, Regnery Press, published a little tract called 10 Books That Screwed Up The World: And 5 Others That Didn’t Help. Regnery Press, as you might know, publishes only the most erudite and informed of authors. Savvy scholars such as Jerome Corsi (Unfit For Command), Newt Gingrich and Ann Coulter. Continuing tradition, with 10 Books… Regnery has reached out to world reknowned Dr. (of theology) Benjamin Wiker who currently holds forth on many and varied subjects from the rarified air of his office at the Discovery Institute.
So when such a distinguished author, backed by one of the world’s most prestigious publishing companies, gives us such a clear, prescient and succinct glimpse of those ten tracts whose words threaten the very foundations of Western civilization, one should probably take notice. However, being broke and enthralled by the final episodes of Battlestar Galactica I ignored it.
Thankfully, onager over at the Democratic Underground’s Skeptics’ group had the presence of mind to flip through the tome while killing some time in a bookstore recently. Thus courtesy of one man’s idle curiosity and boredom, here are the books which everybody should avoid at all lengths. Perhaps burning the libraries is in order. Seriously, man! They’re dangerous!
- The Prince (Niccolò Machiavelli, 1513) (Reason–destroyed good government, as practiced up until then by all Popes and kings)
- Discourse on Method (René Descartes, 1637) (Reason–killed God. And he was French. Descartes, not the late God, that is.)
- Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes, 1651) (Reason–envisioned icky society, not enough God.)
- Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1755) (Reason–early version of Dr. Benjamin Spock. And French.)
- The Manifesto of the Communist Party (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1848) (Reason–BOO! Are you kidding? This is the Discovery Institute. They still check under their beds for Commies. And Darwinists.)
- Utilitarianism (John Stuart Mill, 1863) (Reason–see Hobbes above)
- The Descent of Man (Charles Darwin, 1871) (Reason–see Marx & Engels above)
- Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886) (Reason–re-killed God. Had dubious personal life, which of course invalidates everything he wrote.)
- The State and Revolution (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1917) (Reason–see Marx & Engels above)
- The Pivot of Civilization (Margaret Sanger, 1922) (Reason–too much sex, not enough God. Uppity proto-feminist, bad influence on the womenfolk with all her birth control talk.)
And the “5 more that didn’t help”?
- Mein Kampf (Adolf Hitler, 1925) (Reason–made far-right political ideas unpopular by taking them to their logical conclusions.)
- The Future of an Illusion (Sigmund Freud, 1927) (Reason–one of the Unholy Trinity to modern right-wingers, along with Marx and Darwin. Pseudo-intellectuals like the Irving Kristol family of Wingnut Welfare Queens have made a lucrative career out of attacking that trio.)
- Coming of Age in Samoa (Margaret Mead, 1928) (Reason–see Margaret Sanger above. Also uncritically reported stuff which later proved untrue. Oh, did I mention that Wiker is published by Regnery, the home of Ann Coulter?)
- Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Alfred Kinsey, 1948) (Reason–godless pervert. Interviewed pedophiles, which of course invalidates everything else he did, etc.)
- The Feminine Mystique (Betty Friedan, 1963) (Reason–see Margaret Sanger above)
Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve already read a number of them so I’m probably doomed to lead a friendless life of woe and misery. It’s not too late for you though! Go out and not read a book today. TV is your friend.
How about you? Have you got a list of books that the world would probably be better off if they had never been published? Or maybe you have something else on your mind? Whatever you’d like to talk about, this is the place to do it. Nothing is off limits, just play nice and follow the ground rules:
Open Forum Friday Ground Rules
- Anything goes, as long as you do not become verbally abusive, or start trolling. Getting off topic is one thing, but doing so to provoke an irrational or emotional response is another.
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- Theists and Non-theists alike are welcome.
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12 comments for “Open Forum Friday: 10 Books That Screwed Up The World”
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How did they miss Tom Paine’s “Age of Reason,” the funniest send-up of the Bible ever written?
And “Descent of Man” but not “Origin of Species”? “Descent” was basically just a footnote to “Origin.”
Honestly, I really wonder if Dr. Wiker has actually read these books. And “Mein Kampf”? The Nazis used to joke (behind Hitler’s back, of course) that it was the most important book that no one has ever read. It is absolutely unreadable and has surely never influenced anyone.
I think I can say — hell, prove — that the book that has caused the most suffering in history is the Bible, with the Koran a distant second. Nothing moves people to violence like religious scripture.
@littlejohn: Well, you know it’s hard to pick just the top 15 when there’s so many books that argue against solid 12th C. values. And come on, you’ve got to have Mein Kampf in there. How else are you going to show how truly evil these books are unless you compare it with something so outrageously horrifying that nobody will question whether or not the other books are really as bad as you say. Although I think it’s funny that it’s on the “5 more that didn’t help” list as if Wiger couldn’t decide for a minute whether or not the Nazis really were bad.
Right you are! But the scary thing is that making a list of undesirable books is the first step toward lighting a match.
Sigh… the fundie just had to dis on Kinsey didn’t he… *mumbles something about sexually repressed fundamentalists*
Kinsey was the shit!!
Well, here’s my 5:
5. Darwin’s Black Box, by Michael Behe. Uses completely spurious arguments to try to deny evolution. Actually considered scientific by IDiots.
4. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. A vile, detestable book by a vile, detestable author that has given many people the excuse to be vile and detestable and call themselves “objectivists.”
3. The Turner Diaries. Timothy McVeigh’s inspiration. Need I say more?
2. The Book of Revelation. All the worst fundamentalist radicals love this book. It’s convinced generations of people that the “end times” are just around the corner and this or that person is the AntiChrist and “the rapture’s a’comin’!” The Christians that do the most harm love this book.
1. Mein Kampf. For sheer, unmitigated evil, nothing beats it.
Sam:
I can’t argue with your list.
Maybe we could simplify it with this criterion: Anything recommended by Oprah.
@littlejohn
I agree with you about Oprah but only to a point. She did recommend Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” and “War and Peace”, neither of which I think should be on that list.
No book Burning!
Leave that to the religious ones. I often wonder what was in that library that got torched. It was said to have scrolls with great Knowledge etc. Inventions we have yet to discover etc. Not sure where I learned that. I think it was from some TV show.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria
@littlejohn
The Bible? Are you kidding me? Stalin (an atheist) was responsible for the deaths of 60,000,000 people, which is more than all of the world’s religious wars combined.
@Anthony
Do you even bother to check your facts? The Library at Alexandria was not burned by religious fanatics. It was burned by Julius Caesar. You’d know that if you’d even bothered to read past the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry you link to.
Wow–a sarcastic introduction by someone who has not read the book to a synoptic review of the book by a reviewer who had not read, but only ‘flip[ped] through’ it at the book store. Wiker does not recommend burning these books, but says rather that everyone should read them with a critical eye, thereby giving more curtesy than he got. Furthermore the reasons attributed to Wiker by the reviewer for including these particular books do not even remotely reflect what Wiker actually wrote. BTW, the two lists above are incorrectly classified. Wiker’s actual lists are as follows:
10 Big Screw-ups
1. Manifesto of the Communist Party
2. Utilitarianism
3. The Descent of Man
4. Beyond Good and Evil
5. The State of the Revolution
6. The Pivot of Civilization
7. Mein Kampf
8. The Future of an Illusion
9. Coming of Age in Samoa
10. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
5 That Didn’t Help
1. The Prince
2. Discourse on Method
3. Leviathon
4. Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men
5. The Feminine Mystique
ive heard this man speak on the radio oct 28 on AFR and i quote ‘we obviously cannot just wind the clock back to the 1960s but must take it back to the 16th century’…WIKER’S A RAVING LUNATIC! this man suggests that morality has dwindled not because weve evolved beyond superstition and fear, but because someone wrote a new idea, someone read it, then brought the devil on us all. and dont even start with the stalin crap. he promoted atheism, yes, but he also was a raving lunatic; hes the one who gives credence to the notion that atheism is a religion by acting in a fearful, superstitious manner towards religion. real atheists dont care; we laugh at religious like everyone laughs at 30 year man still believing in santa claus. anyway almost all of these books can be seen as FURTHERING humanity, not holding it back. they introduced ideas that permeated our culture and lead to the medical, ethical, and political enlightenment we have now (minus mein kampf, thats just sick).