A knee-slapper

You know those jokes, some of them clever, most of them dumb, that make the rounds of email and clutter up your inbox? Well, this could raise their overall quality if it was to join them in being spread around - because I think this is just hilarious.

The far-right nutcases at "Human Events" asked "15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders" (Phyllis Schlafly was among them, which gives you an idea of what it takes to be considered a "scholar" or "leader" among this crew) to come up with a Top Ten list of the "Most Harmful Books" of the last 200 years. What clearly emerges is instead a Top Ten list of Books Most Influential in Challenging Reactionary Inanities. It becomes more of a must-read list that gives some insight into the fears that haunt those that have given themselves over to the Dark Side.

The order of the list, presented here in countdown fashion, was based on a sliding point scale.

#10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes, called "a recipe for ever-expanding government."

#9. Beyond Good and Evil by Freidrich Nietzsche, for expanding on his notion "God is dead" and arguing that life is a struggle in which the strong seek to dominate the weak. "The Nazis loved Nietzsche."

#8. The Course of Positive Philosophy by Auguste Comte, because it asserted that human rights are not given by God (and because it introduced the word "sociology").

#7. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, which "disparaged traditional stay-at-home motherhood." In her younger years, it was said, Friedan was "a Stalinist Marxist [and] the political intimate of the leaders of America's Cold War fifth column."

#6. Das Kapital by Karl Marx, who "could not have predicted 21st Century America: a free, affluent society based on capitalism and representative government that people the world over envy and seek to emulate."

#5. Democracy and Education by John Dewey, due to his championing of "secular humanism" and his having "rejected traditional religion and moral absolutes." "He disparaged schooling that focused on traditional character development and endowing children with hard knowledge, and encouraged the teaching of thinking 'skills' instead," which "helped nurture the Clinton generation."

#4. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Dr. Alfred Kinsey, because it, along with the companion volume Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, was "designed to give a scientific gloss to the normalization of promiscuity and deviancy."

#3. Quotations from Chairman Mao, since "Western leftists were enamored with its Marxist anti-Americanism."

#2. Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler even though it "was originally ignored," drawing attention only after Hitler was already in power.

And the Number One Top Ten Most Harmful Book of the last 200 years:

#1. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels, blamed for directly causing "The Evil Empire" and yes, they did use the phrase.

Other books which got votes, this time in decreasing order:

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 (which, by the way, is called The Origin of Species, no second "the," but then again, these are conservative scholars)
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

Y'know, there are a number of books on that list which I haven't read. Library, here I come.