Illiteracy

Human Events Online has posted "the ten most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries," based on the views of 15 "leading conservative scholars and public policy makers (be sure to read who's on the panel; I'm doubtful any have read much of the books cited)."

Here's the list:

1. Communist Manifesto
2. Mein Kampf
3. Quotations from Chairman Mao ("the little red book")

Okay, one may agree or disagree, but there's little surprise so far. But...there's a reason "Wingnuts" are called "Wingnuts:

4. The Kinsey Report

These people simply can't stop thinking about sex for two minutes!

5. Democracy and Education

The 1916 shocker, in which John Dewey encouraged that students be taught "thinking skills." Horror! The summary of the book darkly notes that this is the book on which the education of "the Clinton generation" was based.

6. Das Kapital

Marx gets two in the top ten and this one comes with "a bullet."

7. The Feminine Mystique

Must. Stop. Thinking. About Sex. And Stalin. Constantly!

8. The Course of Positive Philosophy

Huh?

9. Beyond Good and Evil

If God weren't already dead, the wingnuts would have to kill him just to have something to complain about.

And last, but, oh, not so very least...

10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

That wicked John Maynard Keynes. If you don't believe me, just read the blurb:

Summary: Keynes was a member of the British elite--educated at Eton and Cambridge--who as a liberal Cambridge economics professor wrote General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in the midst of the Great Depression. The book is a recipe for ever-expanding government. When the business cycle threatens a contraction of industry, and thus of jobs, he argued, the government should run up deficits, borrowing and spending money to spur economic activity. FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an $8-trillion dollar debt.

Yep, the moment FDR signed the WPA into being, the federal budget became the bloated thing we're saddled with today. In fact, Keynes' wickedness is so great, his 1936 tome has infected the otherwise parsimonious souls currently residing in the White House and controlling Capitol Hill.

Though I have to wonder, didn't Human Events Online get the memo: "Deficits don't matter!"

The "honorable mentions" are interesting -- and telling -- as well. John Stuart Mill's On Liberty makes that list. And, frankly, I call their Right-Thinking Creds (RTC) into question when Darwin's Origin of the Species and Descent of Man doesn't make it up there with Mein Kampf.