Dr. Forbush Thinks

The radical right knows what it likes and it likes what it knows. However, the truth isn’t what it knows. Instead, they have an ideology and they would like to have their books and information to supersede all other books and information.

This can be seen on the website: www.humaneventsonline.com. The website has published a list of the 10 most harmful books of the 19th and 20th century. There is nothing like getting a little negative to stir the pot. This is one step below censorship. Instead of declaring that the books be burned they just rank the books to be harmful. This may seem to be a minor step, but who wants children harmed?

Why would I suggest that these books could harm children? The truth is that they would not be harmed by these books, but the effect of publishing this list is bound to have repercussions among the general public who doesn’t quite understand the value of knowledge. Instead, they see a list of harmful books and they run off to the library to make sure that harm isn’t happening at the library. It is well known that top ten lists of books promote the sales of books. Why wouldn’t we expect that the opposite result wouldn’t be true?

We need to keep in mind that we need to be aware of history and the history of human thought so that we are not doomed to repeat history. If the books on this list begin to be found less and less around the country we will find someone who will not have read these books. This person is bound to come to similar conclusions and they will begin the populace on the same road we traveled to the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. We should remember that the Inquisition caused pain, suffering and death, not the puritanically clean population desired by the church. We should remember how the evils began.

But, we should consider some of the books on this list. “The Communist Manifesto,” “Mein Kampf,” and “Quotations from Chairman Mao” round out the top three. These are books that have been treated like the Bible to justify evils. The Bible, which also caused many harms when used in this way is not considered because it wasn’t published in the 19th or 20th century. Lucky for the creators of this list, because the Bible would rank number one if earlier publications could have been considered.

Number four on the list “The Kinsey Report” should be a surprise. This was the first attempt at a scientific study of sex. Many aspects of sex were studied and this was the foothold of understanding. Many of the initial studies were slightly wrong, but that shouldn’t justify putting the book on a list of harmful books. Actually the reason for placing the book on this list is more likely to be because the radical right doesn’t believe in understanding the truth about sex and sexual activity. Being prudish by nature they would rather have the book labeled as dangerous in order to justify eradicating it from the libraries and schools.

I didn’t intend to cover all ten of the books, but the tenth book is another interesting book. It is “General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” by John Maynard Keynes. This book is chastized by this website because he “…argued, the government should run up deficits, borrowing and spending money to spur economic activity.” So, this is something that George W Bush must have read. To bad they didn’t have this list out in time to prevent the President from borrowing money to give tax cuts to the wealthy in order to spur the economy.

Check out the list at: link. There are quite a few honorable mentions as well. But keep this in mind when the radical right starts banging the drum of censorship based on lists like these.


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