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10 most dangerous books of the 19th and 20th century

W

Wabbit

New Member
This from human events online which is a highly conservative ( right wing ) organisation have listed their 10 most dangerous books of the 19th and 20th century. Click the link for more details about why each book was chosen and who the author is.

Some really weird choices here.

1. The Communist Manifesto
2. Mein Kampf
3. Quotations from Chairman Mao
4. The Kinsey Report
5. Democracy and Education
6. Das Kapital
7. The Feminine Mystique
8. The Course of Positive Philosophy
9. Beyond Good and Evil
10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

2 hits for Marx! Guess those commies are damn dangerous!

The article and list brings to my mind quite a few questions: What would a liberal top 10 look like? What would the list be composed of if it came from another country for example China, India, Britain, Russian, France... and finally is there REALLY such a thing as a dangerous book? Isn't that the dame thing as saying ideas are dangerous? Isn't that the way of censorships and dictators? Personally, my view is there is no such thing as a dangerous book.

What do you think?
 
Here is an example of a dangerous book:

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion claimed to be the minutes of a meeting of Jewish leaders plotting to corrupt and take over the world. Henry Ford admired this book and sent a copy to Hitler, then a budding politician, but not yet the head of Germany. Hitler found this book inspiring, and modified his tactics to focus on the Jews even more than previously. The rest is history.

On a lighter note, the descriptions of the ten books listed above are hilarious:

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=7591
 
But could you really hold the author of that book accountable for Hitler? That's rather like blaming the maker of a gun when somebody takes it and kills. Hitler was a psychopath with deep seated hatreds before he read the book. 98 percent of the population would have thought nothing of the book, but Hitler had problems or was evil ( take your pick ) so it's Hitler that is to blame, Hitler that propagated the horrors, and not the author of the book. Ideas aren't bad - people are.
 
"Guns don't kill people; people do." Does that mean guns aren't dangerous?

The Protocols is an example of a book written to incite. In American law, for example, incitement is not protected speech under the Constitution.

Another example: The Turner Diaries. It contains both the plan and the bomb-making methods used to blow up the federal government building in Oklahoma City, killing 168. The inclusion of that information in a work of fiction was deliberate, with the hope that it be used.
 
Have to disagree! :)

Yes, of course guns are dangerous but people kill people and not guns.

Alright, what do you suggest? We should ban anything that could be dangerous? Shall we ban knifes? How about big sticks? Those objects can be used to harm, sure they are dangerous, but it's the people that use them. Without the people to use them they would be simply just objects.

The book you mention that was used to make a bomb: Well, that book had not existed do you think he would have just given up? He was out to kill a lot of people. He would have found a way.

I think freedom is paramount. Ideas and objects are not dangerous. People are dangerous and we should not restrict our freedoms just because some idea or object COULD be dangerous in the hands of the very small minority.
 
I am happy to have the chance to add that I am not suggesting we ban books, or guns for that matter. I do think it's worthwhile, however, to recognize that some books can be dangerous as a first step to taking precautions, just as with guns.

For example, the proof of how the Protocols were forged was not sufficiently publicized, so that the German people did not have the information they needed to reject Hitler's use of the book.
 
Hmmm, I do see what you are getting at here. As a tool of propaganda or in the hands of a government using the book to incite hate... then yeah I do suppose those books can be dangerous.
 
As long as knowledge is dangerous to some people, there will be dangerous books.

On the other hand, it feels slightly wrong the publishing of such books as The Anarchist Cookbook, etc, but maybe that was in the good ol' days, when internet didn't exist. Today, that kind of material is widely available.
 
I disagree with people who want to censor this book or that book. I suggest instead that concerned people just have to do the work of rebutting the book in question. It can be tiring, always having to follow after hateful books, trying to get the opposing word out; but that is part of the vigilance that comes as a price of freedom.
 
Interesting debate. I agree with the need to rebut the questional books. Censorship makes me nervous because I always wonder: once people get rolling, where do they draw the line. My sister-in-law will tell anyone who will listen that Harry Potter is an evil book and she won't let her teenage children read it. I always want to ask her if it's the book she doesn't trust, or her own children. People can get fanatical too easily. (I don't even think that she has ever even opened the cover of a Harry Potter book, so I'm not sure where her ideas came from).

Very, very interesting discusion.
 
sugarz said:
Censorship makes me nervous because I always wonder: once people get rolling, where do they draw the line.
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If one continues to move the line, and move it and move it and move it and move it, eventually there will be no line.

Censorship is a dangerous word; it should be a guideline and nothing more, like the MPAA ratings of movies.

I become emotionally furious when people speak of banned books, or evil books, or "I'd never let my kid read that..." expressions.
 
I'm a pretty conservative Christian, and we've homeschooled our kids since the dawn of time.. but we've never censored their reading too much. I read the first Harry Potter book before I gave them the ok..I take a lot of guff from some friends for allowing that, but I just didn't see the harm in them, and think it's a matter of choosing one's battles carefully. Besides, we talk about the whole HP world a lot, including the objections some people have over it, and I see it as critical thinking experience.
 
Harry Potter is about overcoming the hardships we face in life, not about satanic rituals and hidden messages forcing kids to mutilate their neighbor's pets. If children are not allowed to read Harry Potter, then they shouldn't be allowed to read any sort of fiction, nor watch any television, nor go outside to play... rediculous.
 
sirmyk said:
Harry Potter is about overcoming the hardships we face in life, not about satanic rituals and hidden messages forcing kids to mutilate their neighbor's pets. If children are not allowed to read Harry Potter, then they shouldn't be allowed to read any sort of fiction, nor watch any television, nor go outside to play... rediculous.
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At the risk of scaring you to pieces.. I have friends who are just about this fanatical about certain types of entertainment.. one family lives just across the street and attend our church, don't own a tv, (and they homeschool..) These people are really strict about music too-even Christian music with a "rock beat" is evil- and those kids love to let mine know how evil we are for listening to it.. they hate HP, they look down on Lord of the Rings..Once, those boys were telling my kids, and another child(who has since moved back to England), in front of this boy's Scottish godfather(!)- that LOTR was evil, and that for proof-"Tolkien wasn't even a Christian." Well, Sammy turned to Uncle Fulton, and asked if that was true.. and Fulton never missed a beat.. he said that of course Tolkien was a Christian, he just wasn't a Protestant.. and Sam asked what that meant.. and his Godfather said, " It means..he wasn't a Presbyterian!"
These kid have also told mine, that "too much reading rots your brain!" Well, even my "overprotected, unsocialized, and isolated" children reckognized that as doggy poo..

And then there's a certain variety of homeschoolers out there who won't let their kids read fairytales or anything else that smacks of magic, they even frown on Narnia..thankfully they aren't all like that! Most homeshoolers I know love fantasy, and use the opportunity to disuss good versus evil themes, as well as the many other themes that are in any good story.
 
These seem like people who need to read Farenheit 451 to set them straight, or maybe even A Clockwork Orange. "Reading too much rots the brain"...that's a good one! Reading enriches the mind.
 
I remember a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon that went something like this:

Mom: How did you like that library book I got for you?

Calvin: It gave me ideas and helped me see things in a new way.

Mom: I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Calvin: It's making my life complicated. Don't do it again.
 
The quote below is from the description of the number 6 most harmful book, Das Kapital from Karl Marx. I will not explain why I think this is the funniest of all the descriptions because that would be arguing politics.

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. Marx theorized that the inevitable eventual outcome would be global proletarian revolution. 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.
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Well, my comments were directed more towards the comments made about the book than the book itself. I haven't read the book so I cannot comment about it.

I found it ironic that he would have said
...portraying capitalism as an ugly phase...exploit labor by paying the cheapest possible wages to earn the greatest possible profits.
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to then go on and defend capitalism.

In my opinion, and again, I haven't read the book so I cannot say for certainty that I would agree with everything that Karl Marx says, but in my opinion that is the exact definition of Capitalism.
 
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