@Barb: Glad that you got the book; I always worry that things I mail won’t reach their destination. I’m also glad that my writing drew you in; perhaps I’ll have to write a book, to try to capture some of the magic. First, though, more blogging.

This is a very good point. It polarizes people into opposing camps and turns issues into “hot buttons”. For example, if I support lower taxes and lower government spending, then I must support neo-con policies. If I support deregulation of, say, marijuana, then I must be a pot-smoking hippie.

I also like that you mentioned that people on both extremes have their own subtle ways of controlling people and judging them from their objective moral standpoints. “Conservatives” and “liberals” are both equally guilty in this regard.

I am not familiar with Kinsey so I cannot comment on that. No book should ever be banned, though, because it’s important to know why someone thinks the way they do, even if the idea is bad. The best way to do that is by encouraging a diverse set of reading and self-thought; something not all that encouraged today.

Keep up the good posting!
.-= Invest It Wisely´s last blog ..Meet Andrew Hallam- The Millionaire Teacher =-.

@Invest It Wisely: I wasn’t trying to disparage the creators of the list; they said in the post that they asked ’15 conservative scholars and public policy makers’ in coming up with the list. If they had asked 15 liberals, I’d imagine there would be a decided liberal leaning to the list. I’m certain that some of the books included here would likely make it on a similar liberal list; the first three books (it’s hard to argue in favor of the Soviet Union, Nazis, or Communist China), Nietzsche, possibly Das Kapital, and What Is To Be Done, by Lenin (an honorable mention on the original list) would probably make the liberal list, although likely in a different order. But Friedan, Keynes, and even Kinsey (to say nothing of Nader and Darwin, as well as the bulk of other authors) seem to make the list more for conservative objections to their points, rather than any actual harm that they caused.

It would be nice to move beyond the fairly simple (and over-simplified) classifications of left and right, to get a holistic and useful view of people’s actual beliefs. But, with the American political system as it currently stands, it’s more advantageous to politicians to keep up the ‘Us vs. Them’ mentality, pitting us against each other over issues where we could likely come up with some common ground.

You do raise an excellent point; the harm caused by these books (and similar, conservative leaning books) is that they lead to people trying to control the actions of others, due to a misguided belief that only they knew the correct mode of behavior or thought. Hopefully, we can learn from our mistakes and not keep trying to do so in the future.

And yes, feminism does seem to be an odd choice for inclusion on this list. Keynes’ theories could arguably be connected to the increasingly large debt the US (and most other Western countries) is carrying (although, that would be missing the point that he suggested cutting government expenditures and raising taxes during good times to slow the economy down, and incidentally help balance the budget), and Kinsey might have inspired a few perverts, but it’s hard to make the case that feminism did more harm than good. I can’t imagine that the economy would have grown as robustly, or that opportunities would have expanded so much, if women were still relegated to the home or stuck in jobs like secretary and elementary teacher, with few other options.

I think we need to move beyond simple left-right dichotomies when they are so narrowly defined. For example, I am neither a conservative nor a liberal, and I could not be placed on such a one-dimensional ruler

My personal take on it is that yes, no book should ever be banned, but ideas are important. Many of the ideas of these books, for better or worse, have led people to believe that they were justified in controlling other people, or that they, and only they, knew the absolute correct objective morality by which all others should be judged by.

It can be shown that such ends lead to less human welfare (welfare here meaning well-being, not something you get from the government), prosperity, and freedom. If anything, we should keep such books around so that we can learn from our mistakes, and know that we are not the infallible creatures we sometimes think we are.

Nice post!
.-= Invest It Wisely´s last blog ..Meet Andrew Hallam- The Millionaire Teacher =-.