10 Most Harmful Books of the Past 200 Years

[JPhillips]

This from a conservative website. The first few make sense, but they drift off from there IMO. The Kinsey Report at #4 is really nuts. My favorite passage comes from #10, Keynes' book on economic theory and using governemnt spending to prime the economy:

FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an $8-trillion dollar debt.

Yep, the deficit is all FDR's fault.

Feel free to nominate your own choices.

10 Most Harmful Books


Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries


Posted May 31, 2005

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.

1. The Communist Manifesto


Authors: Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels
Publication date: 1848
Score: 74
Summary: Marx and Engels, born in Germany in 1818 and 1820, respectively, were the intellectual godfathers of communism. Engels was the original limousine leftist: A wealthy textile heir, he financed Marx for much of his life. In 1848, the two co-authored The Communist Manifesto as a platform for a group they belonged to called the Communist League. The Manifesto envisions history as a class struggle between oppressed workers and oppressive owners, calling for a workers’ revolution so property, family and nation-states can be abolished and a proletarian Utopia established. The Evil Empire of the Soviet Union put the Manifesto into practice.


2. Mein Kampf


Author: Adolf Hitler
Publication date: 1925-26
Score: 41
Summary: Mein Kampf (My Struggle) was initially published in two parts in 1925 and 1926 after Hitler was imprisoned for leading Nazi Brown Shirts in the so-called “Beer Hall Putsch” that tried to overthrow the Bavarian government. Here Hitler explained his racist, anti-Semitic vision for Germany, laying out a Nazi program pointing directly to World War II and the Holocaust. He envisioned the mass murder of Jews, and a war against France to precede a war against Russia to carve out “lebensraum” (“living room”) for Germans in Eastern Europe. The book was originally ignored. But not after Hitler rose to power. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, there were 10 million copies in circulation by 1945.

3. Quotations from Chairman Mao


Author: Mao Zedong
Publication date: 1966
Score: 38
Summary: Mao, who died in 1976, was the leader of the Red Army in the fight for control of China against the anti-Communist forces of Chiang Kai-shek before, during and after World War II. Victorious, in 1949, he founded the People’s Republic of China, enslaving the world’s most populous nation in communism. In 1966, he published Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, otherwise known as The Little Red Book, as a tool in the “Cultural Revolution” he launched to push the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese society back in his ideological direction. Aided by compulsory distribution in China, billions were printed. Western leftists were enamored with its Marxist anti-Americanism. “It is the task of the people of the whole world to put an end to the aggression and oppression perpetrated by imperialism, and chiefly by U.S. imperialism,” wrote Mao.


4. The Kinsey Report


Author: Alfred Kinsey
Publication date: 1948
Score: 37
Summary: Alfred Kinsey was a zoologist at Indiana University who, in 1948, published a study called Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, commonly known as The Kinsey Report. Five years later, he published Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. The reports were designed to give a scientific gloss to the normalization of promiscuity and deviancy. “Kinsey’s initial report, released in 1948 . . . stunned the nation by saying that American men were so sexually wild that 95% of them could be accused of some kind of sexual offense under 1940s laws,” the Washington Times reported last year when a movie on Kinsey was released. “The report included reports of sexual activity by boys--even babies--and said that 37% of adult males had had at least one homosexual experience. . . . The 1953 book also included reports of sexual activity involving girls younger than age 4, and suggested that sex between adults and children could be beneficial.”


5. Democracy and Education


Author: John Dewey
Publication date: 1916
Score: 36
Summary: John Dewey, who lived from 1859 until 1952, was a “progressive” philosopher and leading advocate for secular humanism in American life, who taught at the University of Chicago and at Columbia. He signed the Humanist Manifesto and rejected traditional religion and moral absolutes. In Democracy and Education, in pompous and opaque prose, he disparaged schooling that focused on traditional character development and endowing children with hard knowledge, and encouraged the teaching of thinking “skills” instead. His views had great influence on the direction of American education--particularly in public schools--and helped nurture the Clinton generation.

6. Das Kapital


Author: Karl Marx
Publication date: 1867-1894
Score: 31
Summary: Marx died after publishing a first volume of this massive book, after which his benefactor Engels edited and published two additional volumes that Marx had drafted. 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.


7. The Feminine Mystique


Author: Betty Friedan
Publication date: 1963
Score: 30
Summary: In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan, born in 1921, disparaged traditional stay-at-home motherhood as life in “a comfortable concentration camp”--a role that degraded women and denied them true fulfillment in life. She later became founding president of the National Organization for Women. Her original vocation, tellingly, was not stay-at-home motherhood but left-wing journalism. As David Horowitz wrote in a review for Salon.com of Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique by Daniel Horowitz (no relation to David): The author documents that “Friedan was from her college days, and until her mid-30s, a Stalinist Marxist, the political intimate of the leaders of America’s Cold War fifth column and for a time even the lover of a young Communist physicist working on atomic bomb projects in Berkeley’s radiation lab with J. Robert Oppenheimer.”


8. The Course of Positive Philosophy


Author: Auguste Comte
Publication date: 1830-1842
Score: 28
Summary: Comte, the product of a royalist Catholic family that survived the French Revolution, turned his back on his political and cultural heritage, announcing as a teenager, “I have naturally ceased to believe in God.” Later, in the six volumes of The Course of Positive Philosophy, he coined the term “sociology.” He did so while 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.


9. Beyond Good and Evil


Author: Freidrich Nietzsche
Publication date: 1886
Score: 28
Summary: An oft-scribbled bit of college-campus graffiti says: “‘God is dead’--Nietzsche” followed by “‘Nietzsche is dead’--God.” Nietzsche’s profession that “God is dead” appeared in his 1882 book, The Gay Science, but under-girded the basic theme of Beyond Good and Evil, which was published four years later. 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. The Nazis loved Nietzsche.


10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money


Author: John Maynard Keynes
Publication date: 1936
Score: 23
Summary: Keynes was a member of the British elite--educated at Eton and Cambridge--who as a liberal Cambridge economics professor wrote General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in the midst of the Great Depression. The book is a recipe for ever-expanding government. When the business cycle threatens a contraction of industry, and thus of jobs, he argued, the government should run up deficits, borrowing and spending money to spur economic activity. FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an $8-trillion dollar debt.

Honorable Mention

These books won votes from two or more judges:

The Population Bomb
by Paul Ehrlich
Score: 22

What Is To Be Done
by V.I. Lenin
Score: 20

Authoritarian Personality
by Theodor Adorno
Score: 19

On Liberty
by John Stuart Mill
Score: 18

Beyond Freedom and Dignity
by B.F. Skinner
Score: 18

Reflections on Violence
by Georges Sorel
Score: 18

The Promise of American Life
by Herbert Croly
Score: 17

Origin of the Species
by Charles Darwin
Score: 17

Madness and Civilization
by Michel Foucault
Score: 12

Soviet Communism: A New Civilization
by Sidney and Beatrice Webb
Score: 12

Coming of Age in Samoa
by Margaret Mead
Score: 11

Unsafe at Any Speed
by Ralph Nader
Score: 11

Second Sex
by Simone de Beauvoir
Score: 10

Prison Notebooks
by Antonio Gramsci
Score: 10

Silent Spring
by Rachel Carson
Score: 9

Wretched of the Earth
by Frantz Fanon
Score: 9

Introduction to Psychoanalysis
by Sigmund Freud
Score: 9

The Greening of America
by Charles Reich
Score: 9

The Limits to Growth
by Club of Rome
Score: 4

Descent of Man
by Charles Darwin
Score: 2


The Judges

These 15 scholars and public policy leaders served as judges in selecting the Ten Most Harmful Books.

Arnold Beichman
Research Fellow
Hoover Institution

Prof. Brad Birzer
Hillsdale College

Harry Crocker
Vice President & Executive Editor
Regnery Publishing, Inc.

Prof. Marshall DeRosa
Florida Atlantic University

Dr. Don Devine
Second Vice Chairman
American Conservative Union

Prof. Robert George
Princeton University

Prof. Paul Gottfried
Elizabethtown College

Prof. William Anthony Hay
Mississippi State University

Herb London
President
Hudson Institute

Prof. Mark Malvasi
Randolph-Macon College

Douglas Minson
Associate Rector
The Witherspoon Fellowships

Prof. Mark Molesky
Seton Hall University

Prof. Stephen Presser
Northwestern University

Phyllis Schlafly
President
Eagle Forum

Fred Smith
President
Competitive Enterprise Institute

[terpkristin]

I saw this list in an HT forum a few days ago.
I was surprised; I consider myself to be pretty well-read, and I hadn't read any of these...

/tk

[Flasch186]

Not to Troll, but shouldn't the Bible be on the list (if you only take the negative - certainly more positives then negatives have come from it). The way some people act, behave, spew, interpret certainly have had negative effects. For that matter, most religious books should be on this list....ARE THESE EXCLUDED, becuase of their age. If so ignore me....

Im simply referencing the human interpretations of a great book.

[st.cronin]

Well, that's obviously a right wing nutso list.

Having said that, I nominate Freud, Nietschze, and perhaps Schopenhauer.

[Celeval]

Originally Posted by Flasch186

Not to Troll, but shouldn't the Bible be on the list (if you only take the negative - certainly more positives then negatives have come from it). The way some people act, behave, spew, interpret certainly have had negative effects. For that matter, most religious books should be on this list....ARE THESE EXCLUDED, becuase of their age. If so ignore me....

Im simply referencing the human interpretations of a great book.

I take 'of the last 200 years' to mean published in the last 200 years, not greatest effect in the last 200 years.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by Flasch186

Not to Troll, but shouldn't the Bible be on the list

"of the past 200 years"

[JeeberD]

My nomination for most harmful is Moby Dick. Talk about a yawn-fest...it's probably caused thousands of concussions over the years from people's heads hitting desks as they fell asleep reading it.

[John Galt]

Wow. It clearly is from a conservative website. I'm fine counting one of Marx's books (even though they are much more intellectually powerful and worthy than Hitler's racist rag), but double dipping seems a little much. Adding Kinsey and Friedan is just utter nonsense. Quoting David Horowitz to condemn Friedan is like having Bubba Wheels comment on the writings of Noam Chomsky. And including "Beyond Good and Evil" with the line "the Nazis loved Nietzsche" is just pathetic. And Comte and and Dewey hardly had the influence to make any substantial difference in history.

Still, I think the exercise is an interesting one (even though this list is just indefensible). I'd have to think about it, but my initial inclination would include:

Mein Kampf
The Communist Manifesto (which is far more inflammatory than Das Kapital)
The Raw and the Cooked (by Claude Levi-Strauss) - the intellectual source of the evils of neo-conservatism
Mao's book
Being and Nothingness (by Satre) - although I have nothing in particular against this book, I believe existentialism was horribly misunderstood and inspired all sorts of bad intellectual paths.
The Silent Sping (by Rachel Carson) - because it created a horrible set of ideas about environmentalism that have really destroyed any moden debates on the subject - but I can't deny as an awareness raising book, it was great.
Atlas Shrugged (by Rand) - while the source of my name on this board and a book I long held a fondness for, I have to include it. Given its claim as the second most influential book after the Bible and the way its view of markets and people has influenced so many based upon unrealistic, paper-thin characters, I have to include it on my list.
What Must be Done (by Lenin)

If the time frame were expanded a bit, I would include The Wealth of Nations (by Adam Smith) - because it has encouraged a very simplistic understanding and almost worship of capitalist economies)

I'm sure there are some I've missed, but I really think those are the key books for me.

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

Well, that's obviously a right wing nutso list.

Having said that, I nominate Freud, Nietschze, and perhaps Schopenhauer.

I would add Freud to my list (I guess as I did forget one important source), but I think adding Nietzsche is insane. Even where the Nazis fundamentally misconstrued his ideas, he just wasn't that influential. Among Nazi intellectuals, Heidegger was much more prominent. And Nietzsche is much more responsible for inspiring people like Rand (who did make list) who pretty much stole whole passages from him without any credit given.

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by John Galt

Wow. It clearly is from a conservative website. I'm fine counting one of Marx's books (even though they are much more intellectually powerful and worthy than Hitler's racist rag), but double dipping seems a little much. Adding Kinsey and Friedan is just utter nonsense. Quoting David Horowitz to condemn Friedan is like having Bubba Wheels comment on the writings of Noam Chomsky. And including "Beyond Good and Evil" with the line "the Nazis loved Nietzsche" is just pathetic. And Comte and and Dewey hardly had the influence to make any substantial difference in history.

Still, I think the exercise is an interesting one (even though this list is just indefensible). I'd have to think about it, but my initial inclination would include:

Mein Kampf
The Communist Manifesto (which is far more inflammatory than Das Kapital)
The Raw and the Cooked (by Claude Levi-Strauss) - the intellectual source of the evils of neo-conservatism
Mao's book
Being and Nothingness (by Satre) - although I have nothing in particular against this book, I believe existentialist was horribly misunderstood and inspired all sorts of bad intellectual paths.
The Silent Sping (by Rachel Carson) - because it created a horrible set of ideas about environmentalism that have really destroyed any moden debates on the subject - but I can't deny as an awareness raising book, it was great.
Atlas Shrugged (by Rand) - while the source of my name on this board and a book I long held a fondness for, I have to include it. Given its claim as the second most influential book after the Bible and the way its view of markets and people has influenced so many based upon unrealistic, paper-thin characters, I have to include it on my list.
What Must be Done (by Lenin)

If the time frame were expanded a bit, I would include The Wealth of Nations (by Adam Smith) - because it has encouraged a very simplistic understanding and almost worship of capitalist economies)

I'm sure there are some I've missed, but I really think those are the key books for me.

You are obviously a wacko lefty.

I actually agree with you about Silent Spring but the last time I tried to criticize it on a message board I caught fire.

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by John Galt

I would add Freud to my list (I guess as I did forget one important source), but I think adding Nietzsche is insane. Even where the Nazis fundamentally misconstrued his ideas, he just wasn't that influential. Among Nazi intellectuals, Heidegger was much more prominent. And Nietzsche is much more responsible for inspiring people like Rand (who did make list) who pretty much stole whole passages from him without any credit given.

When I picked Nietschze I wasn't thinking about the Nazis, I was thinking about his influence on Sartre, Camus, et al.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

Author: Freidrich Nietzsche
Publication date: 1886
Score: 28
Summary: An oft-scribbled bit of college-campus graffiti says: “‘God is dead’--Nietzsche” followed by “‘Nietzsche is dead’--God.” Nietzsche’s profession that “God is dead” appeared in his 1882 book, The Gay Science, but under-girded the basic theme of Beyond Good and Evil, which was published four years later. 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. The Nazis loved Nietzsche.

The Nazis misinterpretted, misunderstood and complete took Nietzsche out of context....and that's Nietzche's fault.

The rest of the list doesn't impress me either. The "commie" books are predictably on there. "The Evil Empire of the Soviet Union put the Manifesto into practice." Hardly. Yeah, for the most part, they tried, but pretty much failed. Not to stick up for communism because I hate it with a passion, but the various implementations of communism have hardly been "by the book". They were more authoritarian than they were communist "by the book".

"The book was originally ignored. But not after Hitler rose to power". Well there you go. They even admit the book was hardly influencial. It was Hitler's rise to power that resulted in the book becoming popular, not the book meaningfully helping Hitler's rise to power.

Just a bunch of apparently psuedo-intellectuals taking pot shots at easy and predictable targets to get their names out in the public. A total crap list.

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

When I picked Nietschze I wasn't thinking about the Nazis, I was thinking about his influence on Sartre, Camus, et al.

Because Nietzche is so fundamental, I guess that could be. Of course, his influence has been to both positive and negative sources. I'll back off my earlier statement - I'm considering Nietzsche, but definitely not for the reasons described in that conservative hackjob list.

Another book I would add if the time frame were longer would be Hobbes, Leviathan. I think it more than any other book is the basis for state centralized politics and authoritarian thought in the West.

[Samdari]

Books are not harmful, they are simply collections of ideas. Ideas are not harmful. Stupid people are.

[flere-imsaho]

I was going to suggest "Atlas Shrugged", but John beat me to it.

I'll agree with "The Communist Manifesto", though perhaps not as #1.

[st.cronin]

Books and ideas can have harmful consequences. Suggesting a book is 'harmful' is not the same thing as suggesting it should be banned; it's just pointing out that the book had (or could have) harmful consequences.

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

I was going to suggest "Atlas Shrugged", but John beat me to it.

I'll agree with "The Communist Manifesto", though perhaps not as #1.

I think Hitler has an edge for my number 1. As many problems as both capitalism and communism have created, they did collectively defeat facism which was a much greater danger to the world.

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by terpkristin

I was surprised; I consider myself to be pretty well-read, and I hadn't read any of these...

Wow. You haven't even read "The Communist Manifesto"? It's a little pamphlet, even my conservative friends have read it.

[JPhillips]

Its all a silly intellectual argument, but I'd put Marx over Hitler. Hitler was certainly more harmful personally, but Marx's book changed the lives of a couple billion people.

[st.cronin]

I also find it hard to believe there is a college educated woman who hasn't read The Feminine Mystique.

[flere-imsaho]

I'd add Leo Strauss, "Natural Right & History" to that list.

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

Its all a silly intellectual argument, but I'd put Marx over Hitler. Hitler was certainly more harmful personally, but Marx's book changed the lives of a couple billion people.

Yes. I don't think Mein Kampf was particularly influential, certainly not in comparison to a) Hitler himself or b) The Communist Manifesto. Arguably, of course, The Communist Manifesto affected everyone in the world, either directly or indirectly.

[st.cronin]

Thinking about it a little more, Marx seems like an easy choice for the top spot. Personally, I'd have Freud and probably Schopenhauer fighting it out for 2nd place.

[Warhammer]

I would put Marx at the number 1 spot on the list. Mao gets a deserved spot in there too. Not sure about the rest of the ranking though. I would definitely put Clausewitz's "On War" on the list. It dominated political thought in regards to wars for a century and a half.

I would not put "Atlas Shrugged" on the list. I think it should be required reading for high school students as it gives a viewpoint very different from other required reading in high school.

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

I'd add Leo Strauss, "Natural Right & History" to that list.

You can't double-dip on Strauss and I see The Raw and the Cooked as the intellectual force behind the Wolfowitz's of the world.

It is amazing how almost all of Bush's foreign policy architects have connection to Straussians (most were trained under U Chicago Straussians). Not surprisingly, this same people seem to support the Straussian notion that a government has a moral obligation to lie to and deceive its people.

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by Warhammer

I would not put "Atlas Shrugged" on the list. I think it should be required reading for high school students as it gives a viewpoint very different from other required reading in high school.

I have no problem with the book (although I think giving it to teenagers often reinforces their world-revolves-around-me attitude), but given its claimed influence, I think it has to make the list. Whether you like a book or not is not the same as "harm" created.

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

Yes. I don't think Mein Kampf was particularly influential, certainly not in comparison to a) Hitler himself or b) The Communist Manifesto. Arguably, of course, The Communist Manifesto affected everyone in the world, either directly or indirectly.

I think the argument that Mein Kampf was only famous after Hitler had power is only half right. While it didn't lead to him taking over, it did give intellectual support to his racism and was used to create an ideology for supporters to rally around.

For me, all of the most harmful books were harmful because they were pure "ideology." Hitler's crap supported the worst and most dangerous ideology in modern history, so it makes number 1 on my list.

[JPhillips]

Warhammer: Just curious, but why do you see Clauswitz's book as harmful?

[Warhammer]

Originally Posted by John Galt

I have no problem with the book (although I think giving it to teenagers often reinforces their world-revolves-around-me attitude), but given its claimed influence, I think it has to make the list. Whether you like a book or not is not the same as "harm" created.

I don't see the harm that book created. Call me crazy, but I can see the damage that Nietzche's book caused, I can see the damage of Mao's book, etc. I just can't see the damage caused by "Atlas Shrugged." Now, "The Fountainhead" (was that its title?) I can understand, but not "Atlas Shrugged"

[Flasch186]

Originally Posted by Celeval

I take 'of the last 200 years' to mean published in the last 200 years, not greatest effect in the last 200 years.

hmmm, I think that they could've been a little bit more clear on that one...carry on.

[st.cronin]

I'm fascinated by their inclusion of Keynes. I thought most current economists were at least partially Keynesian?

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by sabotai

The Nazis misinterpretted, misunderstood and complete took Nietzsche out of context....and that's Nietzche's fault.

Yeah, I liked that one too. Nietzsche has been misunderstood by right and left and this is one of the biggest ones. Nietzsche would have been appauled by the Nazis and their focus on the one true leader who embodies the morals of the society. It is not a streach to say that Rand is probably closest to Nietzsche of any right-wing philosopher of the 20th Century. Though Nietzsche was speaking of the creative spark and focusing on the artist who breaks through traditional morality. So he'd probably hold up someone like Andy Warhol over any political leader.

As for the list, I think Mein Kampf HAS to come in 1st. And John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" on the list?! WTF? Kinsey is also ridiculous. As is putting Freud and Darwin on it. What a bunch of morons that wrote this list.

[flere-imsaho]

As a side note, the descriptions of the books in the Original Post are hilarious in their partisanship-masquerading-as-objectivity.

[Raiders Army]

Originally Posted by JeeberD

My nomination for most harmful is Moby Dick. Talk about a yawn-fest...it's probably caused thousands of concussions over the years from people's heads hitting desks as they fell asleep reading it.

I agree, plus it's so thick that if it hit someone over the head, it would be more harmful than Curious George (which is harmful in other ways).

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by Warhammer

I don't see the harm that book created. Call me crazy, but I can see the damage that Nietzche's book caused, I can see the damage of Mao's book, etc. I just can't see the damage caused by "Atlas Shrugged." Now, "The Fountainhead" (was that its title?) I can understand, but not "Atlas Shrugged"

That may be fair since the Fountainhead is more dangerous ideologically, but Atlas Shrugged claims vastly more influence (I still have no idea if their survey is at all right). I think it really gave too much credence to a school of thought that has dominated economics and slowly encroached on other fields. Specifically, the portrayal of humans as rational machines is just crazy and leads to all sorts of problems. Also, the books inability to understand the difference between forced altruism and voluntarty altruism is remarkable (she seemed to understand this difference in "We The Living"). The problem isn't altruism, it is "force," but by Atlas Shrugged, I think Rand has stopped understanding the difference and I think that belief has really supported a lot of ego-centric behavior in America. That is why I think its impact is very harmful.

[Warhammer]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

Warhammer: Just curious, but why do you see Clauswitz's book as harmful?

Good question! His book led to total war. War no longer was a means of achieving limited aims. It was revered as the solution to war, especially after everyone found out that Moltke carried a copy of it with him on campaign. The wars that were fought based upon this book were WW I, and to a lesser extent WW II. The result was that war was brought to the masses to force the masses to force their government to end wars rather than focusing on defeating a country's military.

A good test is look at the wars fought before 1880. They were all "limited" conflicts. Sure, there would be a winner and loser, but you did not have unconditional surrenders and the like. After 1880, look at what happened!

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

I'm fascinated by their inclusion of Keynes. I thought most current economists were at least partially Keynesian?

I think economics, more than any other academic field, is very right-wing these days. And I think Keynes has been painted as the enemy even though the GOP is much truer to Keynesian ideas and policies these days. Very strange.

[st.cronin]

Ever hear of the Civil War?

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

I'm fascinated by their inclusion of Keynes. I thought most current economists were at least partially Keynesian?

Not really. Most economists are probably closer to Friedman-ists, though a large minority are neo-Keynesian. Milton Friedman showed that a lot of Keynes was simply not correct and a shift occured (monetary vs. fiscal policy).

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by Warhammer

Good question! His book led to total war. War no longer was a means of achieving limited aims. It was revered as the solution to war, especially after everyone found out that Moltke carried a copy of it with him on campaign. The wars that were fought based upon this book were WW I, and to a lesser extent WW II. The result was that war was brought to the masses to force the masses to force their government to end wars rather than focusing on defeating a country's military.

A good test is look at the wars fought before 1880. They were all "limited" conflicts. Sure, there would be a winner and loser, but you did not have unconditional surrenders and the like. After 1880, look at what happened!

That's interesting. I guess I had thought since "total war" has largely been abandoned, I didn't think of its harm previous to the present time. Still, I'm not sure his book made "total war" happen as much as it described the inevitability of world war. I think it is a good nomination, but I'm still keeping it off my list.

[tucker342]

There is no such thing as a harmful book.

[Warhammer]

Originally Posted by John Galt

That may be fair since the Fountainhead is more dangerous ideologically, but Atlas Shrugged claims vastly more influence (I still have no idea if their survey is at all right). I think it really gave too much credence to a school of thought that has dominated economics and slowly encroached on other fields. Specifically, the portrayal of humans as rational machines is just crazy and leads to all sorts of problems. Also, the books inability to understand the difference between forced altruism and voluntarty altruism is remarkable (she seemed to understand this difference in "We The Living"). The problem isn't altruism, it is "force," but by Atlas Shrugged, I think Rand has stopped understanding the difference and I think that belief has really supported a lot of ego-centric behavior in America. That is why I think its impact is very harmful.

While I can see your point, I think it does make sense on an economic basis. However, in the realm of politics and government, we are going down the path that she warns against.

I do agree with you regarding the portrayal as rational machines. I had arguments with several friends while reading it, over that point.

I do disagree with the ego-centric behavior being a result of Rand's works though. I think this is due to other issues. I think the biggest issue here is government telling us that we are entitled to things. We are indoctrinated with this in school, with the way the Declaration of Independence, Civics, and other government related subjects are taught. Think about the change in attitude before and after the Great Depression. Prior to the Great Depression, the country was very much individualist. Now, we expect the government to help us out every time we scrape our knee.

[digamma]

Originally Posted by Samdari

Books are not harmful, they are simply collections of ideas. Ideas are not harmful. Stupid people are.

It's syntax, and technically speaking, I agree with you. However, you can measure a book's influence--and it's negative influence, which I think is the real discussion here.

[st.cronin]

I haven't ever met anybody over the age of 20 who took Rand seriously.

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

I haven't ever met anybody over the age of 20 who took Rand seriously.

Oh man, I have. *shudder*

It's funny, because back in high school I read "Anthem" by her, which I really liked. I re-visited it in college and was disgusted with myself. It wasn't even well written.

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

Oh man, I have. *shudder*

You have my deepest sympathies.

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by Warhammer

While I can see your point, I think it does make sense on an economic basis. However, in the realm of politics and government, we are going down the path that she warns against.

We are going to have to disagree here. I think America is moving radically in the other direction on economic policy (although her fears of social policy are more on point).

Originally Posted by Warhammer

I do agree with you regarding the portrayal as rational machines. I had arguments with several friends while reading it, over that point.

I think without Rand, you don't have Friedman and others gaining legitimacy on these points. What started as an assumption in economics ("If we assume people are wholly rational with perfect information . . .") turned into an ideology without basis in fact. I guess being largely academically focused in my reading, this transition seems especially scary to me (a bias I freely admit)

Originally Posted by Warhammer

I do disagree with the ego-centric behavior being a result of Rand's works though. I think this is due to other issues. I think the biggest issue here is government telling us that we are entitled to things. We are indoctrinated with this in school, with the way the Declaration of Independence, Civics, and other government related subjects are taught. Think about the change in attitude before and after the Great Depression. Prior to the Great Depression, the country was very much individualist. Now, we expect the government to help us out every time we scrape our knee.

I don't know about this. There is a strong difference between individualism and egoism in my mind. I tend to think of myself as a strong individualist, but an anti-egoist. I think Rand conflates the two and gives legitimacy to a strong egoism and disregard for the world. I've never disagreed with her cartoonish portrayals of government run amok (they are almost impossible to disagree with because of her strawmen arguments). However, that is not the same as agreeing with her answer to those problems. Like I said earlier, I think the danger is always in "ideologies" and just as Marx was right about so much about capitalism, it didn't make his solution any better. As a reformed Objectivist, I can see how much Rand's worldview can really make one "evil" through egoism and that is why I think her book has been so harmful.

I also really don't like the way she romanticizes early America while wholly ignoring slavery and the way she glorifies rape, but I don't think either of those are reasons why Atlas Shrugged was harmful.

[Subby]

The Bible and The Quran should be right up there with The Communist Manifesto.

Those are the top three and it isn't even close, imo...

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

I haven't ever met anybody over the age of 20 who took Rand seriously.

Tragically, I took Rand seriously into my twenties.

Of course, few people on this board would guess that. Jim even took a pot shot at me the other day about me being the anti-John Galt. And, on that note, Jim is well into his twenties and I believe he takes Rand VERY seriously.

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

Oh man, I have. *shudder*

It's funny, because back in high school I read "Anthem" by her, which I really liked. I re-visited it in college and was disgusted with myself. It wasn't even well written.

Anthem is by FAR her weakest book, so I think that is hard to judge her by. I salute her efforts to make fiction so incredibly politically powerful and I still think We the Living, the Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged are unique in that regard.