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"Ten Most Harmful Books"
Jonathan Chait uses the publication of this list to characterize the conservative movement as "a gaggle of thick-skulled fanatics." The list, he continues, "offers a fair window into the dementia of contemporary conservative thinking." Conservatives, he says, can’t distinguish between "totalitarian manifestos" and "seminal works of social science." Max, Mao, Hitler, and Lenin presumably belong on the list, but John Dewey, John Maynard Keynes, and Betty Friedan do not. I don’t presume to know what folks like Robert George, Brad Birzer, Arnold Beichman, and Herb London were thinking, but it seems to me that the following explanation is at least plausible. Some of the works--the "totalitarian manifestos"--were included because they animated the forces of evil in the world. Others were included because they were sufficiently plausible to mislead well-meaning people down an ultimately harmful path. Yes, we’re talking about a variety of different kinds of harm (to family, culture, character, and soul, as well as to life and limb), which may be difficult to compare to one another, so that any actual ranking may provide only an extremely unsubtle presentation of a thoughtful person’s nuanced judgment. And, of course, any collective judgment constructed from the observations of a relatively disparate group (not all conservatives think alike, despite Mr. Chait’s efforts to paint with a broad brush) is going to seem less coherent than those made by the individuals themselves. So, Mr. Chait, go ahead and take your cheap shots and engage in name-calling. It’s a lot easier than engaging with the individuals themselves. Update: You can read Ken Masugi’s characteristically thoughtful response here. And it turns out that Chait is just channeling Matthew Yglesias, who is similarly either incapable of parsing, or unwilling to parse, the list. Update #2: I queried Brad Birzer, the one list contributor with whom I’m acquainted (he spoke at a Veritas Forum at Oglethorpe a few years ago), and received this response: Though I certainly can’t speak or write for any of the other participants in the HE poll, I agreed wholeheartedly with what you wrote in your blog. As I voted (my wife and I brainstormed the list the night before heading to the hospital and having our fourth child [a boy, by the way]), I first asked myself what was truly evil in the past two hundred years-that is, those ideas which resulted in radical revolutions, the overthrowing of religious institutions, and the wholesale slaughter of innocent lives. Once I’d exhausted the truly nasty ones (Hitler, Marx, Mao, etc.), I went to the misguided and misleading ones. In each of the books I selected, I tried to identify those most anti-God, anti-human person, and anti-family. Ultimately, I wanted to find out what had helped shape what John Paul the Great during his pontificate identified as "the culture of death."
Frankly, I’ve been amazed at what’s been written regarding the poll. One person asked-and I’m paraphrasing-"what’s next: banning or burning"? Interesting to see that when a conservative actually exercises his right to free speech, he suddenly becomes a threat to free speech. Are such rights now particular rather than universal?
Of course there’s the LA Times and the "gaggle of thick-skulled fanatics." It’s certainly not the first time conservatives have been accused of being anti-intellectual. But, and admittedly I don’t have my OED handy, can "gaggle" ever apply to anything but geese?
The intent of the poll, as I understood it, was to discover which books and ideas led to things such as the decline of the family and the lack of respect for the dignity of the human person at home (does one need to look any farther than our abortion clinics, our nursing homes, or our Indian Reservations?) as well as to things such the vast state-sponsored murders over the previous 100 years a little farther away from home.
After all, the past century witnessed numerous ideologues-the Lenins, the Stalins, the Hitlers, the Idi Amins, and the Pol Pots-leading hordes of the confused, the empty, the vain, and the avaricious across over half the globe. Estimates are that ideological regimes slaughtered nearly 200 millions civilians in the gulags, Holocaust camps, and Killing Fields; another 40 or so million soldiers died in warfare. We have neither fully understood why they did so nor have we come to understand what happened in 1989 when Eastern Europeans simply said "enough." Neither death nor victory have made much sense to us in America.
Indeed, we have much to learn about the intellectual and ideological currents of the past 100 years, here and abroad, and this poll was one small but important attempt to discover a bit of what’s happened and what’s happening. It certainly wasn’t ignorant, fanatic, or about "banning or burning books."
It wasn’t about geese either. Mickey, you have an eloquent and impassioned colleague. Brad may be thick-skinned (in this business, he has to be), but he’s not thick-skulled.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [16] | 6/3/2005 2:40 PM
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Amnesty International’s descent
Read this, this, this, this, and, finally, this. It seems virtually impossible not to agree that AI "is veering dangerously close to Noam Chomsky/Ramsey Clark-land," as one astute observer puts it. And I haven’t even mentioned William Schultz’s contributions to the Kerry campaign.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [3] | 6/3/2005 2:35 PM
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Breaking rocks and building cathedrals
This is Terrence Moore’s graduation address for the 2005 class of the Ridgeview Classical Scools in Fort Collins, Colorado. Moore is principal of the school. I visited the school last week, and was very impressed with the curriculum, the faculty, and the students (and with Jennifer and Terrence’s two-month old son, Samuel). I wish all commencements addresses read so! This is a sample, but do read the whole thing:
There is an old story, probably apocryphal, about three men working in a quarry who were asked what they were doing. The first man said that he was breaking big rocks into little ones. The second man said he was making a living. The third man said that he was building a cathedral. Now notice that all these statements are true but all quite different. The first man did not look beyond the task and the sweat of the moment. We can imagine what went through his mind: "I’ve broken up fifty rocks today; I have fifty more to go," or something to that effect, from one hour to the next, day in and day out, for his whole life. The second man extended his thoughts somewhat. For him, working in the quarry meant supporting himself and probably his wife and children. And of course, supporting oneself and one’s family is a worthy business, enlisting the virtues of responsibility and perseverance in some measure. But in this man’s mind we see an entirely personal objective, perhaps a grudging admission that man must earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, without any indication of aims beyond one’s immediate concerns. The third man’s answer is different. He is building a cathedral. Make no mistake: he is breaking big rocks into little ones, too, and no doubt making a living. But the ultimate end of his endeavor, however backbreaking and tedious in its daily routine, is to offer an encounter with the divine. Ultimately, his life is not about sweat or necessity; it’s about rapture. Thus, not only are these men’s answers different, but their lives are different. While none of these lives is lived in vain, they vary in the extent of their devotion to the good and the beautiful and the true. Their words measure the distance between the thoughtless and the thoughtful, between the pedestrian and the sublime.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [11] | 6/3/2005 11:20 AM
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Bobby Seale
To cure nostalgia for the 60s and 70s, let’s consider what former Black Panther Bobby Seale is up to these days. Win Myers knows.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [2] | 6/3/2005 11:17 AM
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The Sadris in the Iraqi government
Bartle Bull spent five weeks embedded with the Mahdi army in Sadr City before and after the election, observing what happens when a rebel movement decides to negotiate its way into formal democratic politics. An interesting case study of a rebel movement embracing democracy. The Sadris, as they are called, led by Muqtada al-Sadr, now now hold two of the most important ministries in Iraq—health and transport, as well as the ministry of state for civil society.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments | 6/3/2005 10:04 AM
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The horror in Zimbabwe
You have been, I presume, at least hearing about, if not following, the terror going on in Zimbabwe.
Over 22,000 people have been arrested, many murdered and their homes--such as they were--destroyed. Why? Because a tyrant felt moved to do it. Do not use his name--he is a counterfeit of a man--it is a disgrace to remember it. The Strategy Page calls it "democide." The black market--in food!--is at issue; that’s the only thing (aside from aid) that keeps the people barely alive. The professed tyrant--this most wicked fiend, this heartless hind, this little hangman, this cut-throat dog, this roastmeat for worms--is starving his perceived enemies to death. Horror.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [3] | 6/3/2005 8:42 AM
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Bad news
This is not a good way to die:
In South Carolina, Stephen Gable, 52, was riding his motorcycle Saturday afternoon on Priceville Road when a boat became detached from its trailer and hit him. Young riders are always instructed to stay away from trailers, especially those carrying boats. I had a nice ride late yesterday afternoon, just before the light rain hit. I took my son’s hot and loud bike, just for a change of pace. It was good.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [6] | 6/3/2005 8:32 AM
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North Atlantic Free Trade Association?
Austin Bay suggests offering Britain, Ireland, and the Netherlands membership in a renamed NAFTA. I think he’s at least half-serious.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [3] | 6/3/2005 7:45 AM
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Deep Throat, for the last time
This is Bob Woodward’s lengthy article on how Mark Felt became Deep Throat. Woodward and Bernstein are already saying that they have the book on all this in the works--which means it was mostly written before the Felt story broke, as was the Post article. So, we’ll be hearing a lot more about this for many months to come, Woodward and the Felt family will be making a lot more money, and all the journalists and reporters brought up on the Sixties and Watergate will keep talking about themselves and the good old days. They were all over the TV talkies this morning. And it got boring very quickly. One of them, full of inuendo and pride, actually asked where are the investigative reporters now, when they’re really needed, given that we have this all-too-secretive administration, etc. You get the point. So I’m going to pay attention to any of this only to the extent that I pay attention to archeology: Sometimes dead things merit some study only because they are dead; that is, not much. Peggy Noonan is on a semilar point, and she says it better than I can:
Is the Deep Throat story over? Yes, in the sense that it will no longer be treated as a mystery. In spite of the million questions we’ll be hearing--and there are and will be many serious questions--the MSM will stick with the heroic narrative. Mr. Felt was Deep Throat. Deep Throat was a great man who helped a great newspaper put the stop to the lies and abuses of an out-of-control White House. End of story. Why? Because in celebrating this story in a certain way journalists of a certain age celebrate themselves. Because to bring unwelcome and unwanted skepticism to the narrative would be to deny 20th-century journalism--and 21st-century journalists--their great claim to glory. Because the MSM is still liberal, and the great Satan of all liberals, still, is Richard Nixon. And because, as Ben Bradlee might say, It’s a goddamn good story.
Or as they put it in yet another John Ford masterpiece, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," "When the legend becomes the fact, print the legend."
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [3] | 6/2/2005 3:55 PM
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We knew this all along
If you connect the dots in this article, it turns out that virtually any disagreement with the Democrats and their liberal interest group allies might trigger a filibuster. Thus Michael McConnell, whose nomination to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals won widespread support, might face a filibuster now: But that doesn’t mean McConnell would have an easy time if he is nominated to the high court. A former assistant solicitor general in the Reagan Justice Department, he was highly critical of the high court ruling in Bob Jones University v. United States, the 1983 case that determined that the Internal Revenue Service could revoke the charitable tax-exempt status of a private university for discrimination in banning interracial dating among its students.
"The striking thing is that McConnell has criticized by our count about a dozen significant Supreme Court decisions on civil rights and civil liberties," says [Eliot] Mincberg [of PFAW], whose group has been critical of McConnell, Roberts, and Luttig. While Steve Dillard finds some comfort in this article supporting McConnell’s 10th Circuit nomination, it seems to me to be written carefully so as not to commit its authors, prominent liberal law professors, to supporting McConnell’s elevation to the Supreme Court. Hat tips: Southern Appeal and Bench Memos.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments | 6/2/2005 2:33 PM
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Apocalexington
Here’s a WaPo story about a class taught by my friend Eduardo Velasquez, in whose reflected glory I bask. Knowing Eduardo, I’m confident that the class is more provocative and profound than the reporter was able to capture. Here’s the syllabus. Jeremy Lott has some questions for Eduardo. I encourage him to answer them. Update: Eduardo offers more reflections here. I should note that I’ve read and been impressed by his scholarly work on popular culture. You can get some sense of his range by taking a look at his c.v.. Another source is the program he put together for the Politics, Literature, and Film division (#41) of the APSA. He doesn’t pander and he doesn’t produce fluff.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [11] | 6/2/2005 1:40 PM
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The demise of an abortion canard
This story gives the lie to the pro-choice claim that abortions have increased during the Bush Administration. Here, here, and here are articles in which the claim is made. Here’s the factcheck.org analysis of the claim. And here’s author Glen Stassen’s response. Update: More here, via Mere Comments.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 6/2/2005 10:56 AM
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More Baylor
This article indicates that the firing of David Lyle Jeffrey took some members of Baylor’s Board of Regents by surprise. I think there were regents who were very supportive for Dr. Jeffrey and the job he did as president," [Board of Regents Chairman Will] Davis said. "It’s hard to see this as a healing event."Davis said the university charter gives Underwood the power to hire and fire, though he said it should be done with consultation of regents. Hmm. Update: Via Russell Moore, here’s former Baylor prof Bill Dembski on "housecleaning at Baylor." For more on this, go here and here.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [3] | 6/2/2005 10:47 AM
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House and Senate elections in 2006
Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times looks at the Senate, and thinks that there is no real chance that the Democrats will take it back in 2006. Ken Masugi has something thoughtful to say about this. Also note that Chrystal Ball notes this: "Between 1934 and 1994, the party in charge of the presidency lost House seats in midterm congressional elections without fail." And yet, "remarkably, the 1998 and 2002 congressional midterms consecutively turned conventional wisdom on its head." David Wasserman goes on to explain why any large scale shift in the immediate future is less likely: The truly marginal seats have shrunk. Therefore, virtually no chance for the Demos to take back the House in 2006.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments | 6/2/2005 9:06 AM
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Trust
Trust is now reduced to a chemical, oxytocin, by science. "Scientists have found the chemical equivalent of the perfect sales pitch: a hormone that makes us more trusting than we normally are.
Volunteers in a study were told they were participating in a decision-making experiment. Those who inhaled the hormone, which occurs naturally in the brain, were more likely to entrust others with large sums of money than were volunteers who inhaled no hormone."
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [11] | 6/2/2005 8:58 AM
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Note to those who comment
By and large, the comments at NLT are thoughtful and interesting, but sometimes we get comments from readers that are crude, base, vulgar, or in some way personal. I respectfully request that such comments not be posted. When they are, I will remove them. Thank you.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [10] | 6/2/2005 8:43 AM
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The Dutch vote and Euro gloom
With a turnout above 60% (only 39% voted for members of the European Parliament last year), about 63% of Dutch voters reject the European constutution. Daniel Drezner has more. British Foreign Minister Jack Straw says this "raises profound questions over the future of the European Union." And the Conservatives say that the constitution is dead and are calling for a referendum. The Euro dropped to an 8 month low.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [3] | 6/1/2005 9:47 PM
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House Demos divided
"Despite the partisan saber-rattling on Capitol Hill, a significant number of votes in the GOP-controlled House are passing with broad Democratic support. It’s a trend that surprises analysts who have noticed the numbers, and it hints at a structural advantage for the GOP as it presses its agenda heading into 2006 elections, according to the Christian Science Monitor. About 20% of House Democrats come from districts that Bush carried in 2004 (only 8% of GOP Reps come from distrcits carried by John Kerry). The article lists a number of measures (bancruptcy bill, class action reform, permanent repeal of the estate tax, abortion notification, etc.) that at least 40 Demos have supported. When I spoke to staffers on Capitol Hill a few weeks ago, I pointed to this fact by way of explaining that the MSM’s emphasis on vicious partisanship and division doesn’t quite hold up; I also pointed out that Nancy Pelosi is not quite telling the truth when she claims that her party in the House is united. Note the reference to the Black Caucus, by the way.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments | 6/1/2005 9:26 PM
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