CFAP: Ten Books That Scare Conservatives

[gtar100]

Thanks to the Center for American Progress for providing this link...

HumanEventsOnline

The list comes complete with comments on the books they think are "harmful" and why. Very revealing. I wonder if they actually read any of them.


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

1. The Communist Manifesto
Authors: Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels
Publication date: 1848

2. Mein Kampf
Author: Adolf Hitler
Publication date: 1925-26

3. Quotations from Chairman Mao
Author: Mao Zedong
Publication date: 1966

4. The Kinsey Report
Author: Alfred Kinsey
Publication date: 1948

5. Democracy and Education
Author: John Dewey
Publication date: 1916
(quick quote from comments: "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

7. The Feminine Mystique
Author: Betty Friedan
Publication date: 1963

8. The Course of Positive Philosophy
Author: Auguste Comte
Publication date: 1830-1842

9. Beyond Good and Evil
Author: Freidrich Nietzsche
Publication date: 1886

10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
Author: John Maynard Keynes
Publication date: 1936

Honorable Mention:

The Population Bomb
by Paul Ehrlich

What Is To Be Done
by V.I. Lenin

Authoritarian Personality
by Theodor Adorno

On Liberty
by John Stuart Mill

Beyond Freedom and Dignity
by B.F. Skinner

Reflections on Violence
by Georges Sorel

The Promise of American Life
by Herbert Croly

Origin of the Species
by Charles Darwin

Madness and Civilization
by Michel Foucault

Soviet Communism: A New Civilization
by Sidney and Beatrice Webb

Coming of Age in Samoa
by Margaret Mead

Unsafe at Any Speed
by Ralph Nader

Second Sex
by Simone de Beauvoir

Prison Notebooks
by Antonio Gramsci

Silent Spring
by Rachel Carson

Wretched of the Earth
by Frantz Fanon

Introduction to Psychoanalysis
by Sigmund Freud

The Greening of America
by Charles Reich

The Limits to Growth
by Club of Rome

Descent of Man
by Charles Darwin

[Oreo]

1. Unsafe at any speed... dangerous?

God forbid large companies be forced to make their cars safer.

Who are these books dangerous to? Looks like the corporatocracy to me.


Also... why is that anytime I goto a conservative website I always see this guy?? Is it another Bush loves bald men thing??

[Tux]

2. Coming of Age in Samoa?

Read that and don't understand why it's "dangerous".

Of course, adding Democracy and Education really shows what conservatives hate most. As an evil Yoda would said, "Very bad democracy and education are."

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Because it's about the Samoans' tolerant attitudes toward (gasp!)

teenage sex. People used to tut-tut about this book a lot in the 1960s, but I hadn't heard anything at all about it for year.

All in all, these books are about leftist politics, environmentalism, consumer protection, feminism, and other "evils."

So I guess to these conservatives, fascism, earth-raping, consumer-gouging, and mysogyny are virtues?

[Wright Patman]

6. This was required reading

in Mary Kay Letourneau's class, I believe.

[nashville_brook]

7. i'm reading Mass Psychology of Fascism, Wilhelm Reich

wondering why there is such interplay between sexuality and conservatism. big emphasis on emerging sexuality in children has always baffled me with the repugs. like, what the HELL did their parents DO to THEM when they were growing up.

it's got to be creepy.

and why do these people who are so freaked out about teenage sexuality dress their kids like brittany spears?

random thoughts.

[phantom power]

4. Silent Spring???

If it wasn't for that book, our national bird would probably be extinct today, along with god only knows how many other species.

The lunatics really are in charge of the asylum.

[bemildred]

5. LOL. They read? Who knew? nt

[OldCurmudgeon]

10. Read them? HA!

I am absolutely certain that they did NOT read the Darwin entries.

Otherwise they might have gotten the title correct: "The Origin of Species" (correct) vs. "Origin of the Species" (wingnut).

See, one is about biology, and how species came about. The other is a wingnut caracature of humans descending from apes.

But I'm sure that all the judges carefully read Mein Kampf from cover to cover, and can quote from it extensively in the original german. It's probably on the list for being "disappointingly mild".

[MountainLaurel]

11. Oh no, they actually haven't read any of them

Just like parents who challenge books in public schools because they mention "dirty pillows" or challenging authority: They never read anything of the book other than the most salacious parts.

[HereSince1628]

8. kick

[sarcasmo]

9. The one that sticks out to me is Democracy and Education

Like they really care about Democracy and Education.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

12. Communist Manifesto and the Blue Book

of the John Birch Society were required reading at my high school. I came to the conclusion that there wasn't much difference between the groups, but others probably drew different conclusions. I'm just glad I had enlightened teachers that were unafraid of words on a printed page.

[Demeter]

13. Couple of Missing Books:

A Handmaiden's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Gate Into Women's Country by Sherri Tepper

[kineneb]

14. I have read...

The Population Bomb, Silent Spring and The Limits of Growth during high school. And not for any class, but just because I wanted to! One not on the list, Also Sprach Zarathustra, I read in German so I could write a paper on the music by R.Strauss.

I want to read Das Kapital and Mein Kampf in the original German, also just for fun.

Yes, I know, I have a tweeked sense of "fun".

[Twitch14]

15. Kettle, we have the pot on line 1....

Anybody else amused by the fact that Nietzsche's description pretty much fits the neocon crowd? Except, of course, that the neocons (as opposed to some of the true conservatives) believe their fig leaf of religion makes them different.

I also find it amusing that these so-called "scholars" try to pin the current debt on FDR. Hey, guys, there's this wonderful new thing called the Internet. Try searching on "national debt"; the second hit leads you to these wonderful links:

Debt Total by year, 1900-1949:
http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdhisto3.htm
FDR inherited about 16 billion, which rose to 48 billion before WWII kicked in. So that's a 200% increase. (Look, we liberals can do math, too!!)

Debt Total by years, 1950-2000
http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdhisto4.htm
Take a look at the years of your favorite sons, Reagan and Bush the First. Reagan inherited right around 1 trillion. When Bush I left office, it was right around 4 trillion. Which is (wait a sec, carry the 2....) 300%!!!

I think I'm bookmarking these three pages for the next "why do you think Repugs are so dumb?" question I get.