Posted on 08/24/2008 7:16:12 AM PDT by Publius804
A Good Book About Bad Books
by Logan Gage
8/23/08
10 Books that Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others that Didn't Help
Benjamin Wiker, Regnery, 260 pages, $27.95
If ever there were a book designed specifically for the enjoyment of InsideCatholic readers, surely it is Benjamin Wiker's new 10 Books that Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others that Didn't Help. Wiker should be renowned (if he is not already) for Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists -- a book that at once exposes both the ancient philosophical antecedents and modern cultural consequences of Darwinism.
In the present book, the professor of philosophy at Franciscan University of Steubenville proposes not a new era of book burning, as some might suppose, but rather a learned critique of toxic ideas floating in our cultural water. Wiker plays the role of EPA in the "Great Books" world, covering Machiavelli, Descartes, Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx/Engels, Mill, Darwin, Nietzsche, Lenin, Sanger, Hitler, Freud, Mead, Kinsey, and Friedan.
10 Books's two main virtues consist in exposing our often blind worship of "Science" and revealing the central mistake of the past several centuries of intellectual thought: the attempt to destroy and replace the West's traditional understanding of the human person and his place in the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at insidecatholic.com ...
Dr Spock’s book needs to be in this list of the top ten.
You can see the top 10 list by looking at the table of contents at Amazon.
The only one I disagree with is “Mein Kampf”. I don’t think it’s ideas are relevant in todays world it has had comparatively little lasting impact. Nazi Germany’s predations had little to do with Hitler’s writing. I think “Mein Kampf” should be bumped to the bottom 5 and “The Feminine Mystique” should be moved up to the top 10.
I’ve been reading this book. Highly recommend it.
No argument here. Only problem is, what do you bump from the top 10 list?
Indeed, the "top 10" container needs to be very elastic.
Maybe more folks will read, rather than post talking points.
mark for later
Hmmmmmm
Check out . . .
http://www.amazon.com/SS-Brotherhood-Bell-Nasas-Majic-12/dp/1931882614
http://www.amazon.com/SS-Brotherhood-Bell-Nasas-Majic-12/dp/1931882614
and
http://www.enterprisemission.com/Von_Braun.htm
and
http://www.enterprisemission.com/Von_Braun2.htm
and
post #76 at this FR thread of quotes of our politcal and other leaders since 1900:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2031425/posts?page=77#77
Helen Gurley Brown Sex And The Single Girl is at the top of my list. Published in the 70’s
Sorry, I don’t understand. What do kook “science” and the fact that the phrase “New World Order” (as opposed to Novus Ordo Seclorum) appears in Mein Kampf have to do with the impact of the work or its relevance in today’s world?
Sorry but unless your point is “Jewish physics bad, Nazi physics good, Hitler said it all first”; I am missing your point.
BTW, regarding the web sites that use von Braun and Explorer as their “source”; one of the reasons for orbiting satellites during the IGY was to determine the shape of the earth’s gravitational field. It was strongly suspected that differences in the density of the earth’s crust cause the field to be uneven. This fact was what causes satellites with orbital periods less than 24 hours to seem to levitate up to higher orbits unless the effect of atmospheric drag is greater than the additional acceleration. No great mystery here, just basic (non Jewish) Newtonian physics. The phenomena just couldn’t be measured until we put a satellite in orbit.
Have you done the spinning steel ball experiment yourself?
That’s a pretty basic affront to Newtonian/Einsteinian physics . . . seems to this layman.
Those of us researching UFO stuff for decades have persistently ran into rumors on the fringes of the fringes about Nazi research from the early days of WWII. . . .
And, of course, the bits about the NWO globalists being satanic mystics have been persistent, as well.
Certainly such are congruent with Biblical prophecies about the end times.
Now we have surfacing reasonably convincing books asserting that the Nazi powers that be essentially, instead of per se working for the West as part of project Paper Clip . . .
more or less co-opted the West to serve them . . . and have ended up as significant parts of, if not running, the NWO including all the hyper advanced super black technologies associated therewith.
I don’t !KNOW! what the truth is . . . but it’s more than a little fascinating to contemplate.
AND IF IT IS TRUE, it would explain a lot of ‘coincidences.’
Whether it’s true or not, that even the command structure of the Nazi’s survived into Project Paper clip . . .
and even whether it’s true, or not, that they Nazi’s ended up in charge of the globalist cabal/oligarchy . . .
IT IS CERTAINLY IS TRUE that the same spiritual forces are behind both.
Howie Zinn has to be on that list.
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I'll be a devil's advocate here and say that I agree that Mein Kampf has had zero influence on the world after 1945, and no one has quoted the book with approval after the 1930s, BUT, I think it has an enormous influence as a negative example.
The one lasting influence of the Nazis is that the idea of "racism" has become the absolute, highest concept of evil, and substitutes for evil in the modern lexicon. Which has very serious and dangerous consequences for the world. Muslim terrorists learn very quickly to shout "racism" when confronted about any of their pathologies and violence--because they know that in contemporary Western belief, "racism" trumps everything.
“The only one I disagree with is “Mein Kampf”. I don’t think it’s ideas are relevant in todays world it has had comparatively little lasting impact. “
I disagree with you. The list is about those books that (at some time) screwed up the world. The list is not about books that continue to screw up the world in today’s world. Completely different lists.
Agreed. We still have to put up with the brats this guy helped create.
Is ‘Earth in the Balance’ by Al Gore part of this mix?
I think the author should create a new category or re-title the book (’10 Books That Have Screwed Up the World — and 10 That Will’)
I see your point but I still think Friedan, Spock and Kinsey (who I’m glad to see made the list) have done more to undermine 5000 years of human civilization than Hitler ever dreamed.
I also think we should make room for Freud since without him there would have been no Kinsey.
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