Wednesday, June 1, 2005

Readership contest: What books should the right consider dangerous?

Human Events Online recently published its list of the "ten most harmful books" of the 19th and 20th centuries. Have some fun: browse the list--and don't forget the Honorable Mentions and the panel of judges.

It's an odd list, but you can learn a lot about someone by knowing who they consider their enemies. As you'll see, with few exceptions, the list was mostly a bunch of white guys being dissed a bunch of other white guys (If you're not both of those things, should you be offended or relieved?) One friend I shared this with wondered why Freud was merely an also-ran (and not one of his scariest books, at that). Another guessed that the point of calling some of them (e.g. Mein Kampf or Will to Power) "harmful" was that wider familiarity might would reveal their secrets.

But I thought the list was surprising as much for what it missed as for what it included. Where, for example, are Our Bodies Ourselves, Heather Has Two Mommies, and that master-plan of Baby Boomer permissiveness, Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care?

So here's the question: What books should the right wing really be afraid of?

Imagine, if you will, that they could send some heroic volunteer back on a Harlan Ellison-esque suicide mission into the past to prevent certain books from ever being published, thereby restoring conservative order to the present. (I'm thinking of Tucker Carlson, but you can imagine sending whoever you want.) What books should they go after, and why?

C'mon, folks. The GOP has had their hands full lately--what with the Iraq debacle, the "nuclear option" debacle, the release of the "Downing Street Memo," the Coingate debacle, the ever-increasing unpopularity of Social Security Phase out, and Bush's record-low approval ratings. They can't worry about all that and still have time to make up lists of dangerous books.

Do your part: Click on "Comments," above, and nominate the book you think the right should be most worried about.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It may not take the whole Bible to freak the right wing clowns--just the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor? The meek shall inherit the earth? Treasonous talk!!