Since I enjoyed writing that "10 most harmful books post below," here's another one. This one is devoted to one of my favorite topics, the incoherent mess that right-wing thought has become. Surely you've read Human Event's list by now, and the accompanying descriptions. And while the list is disturbing, the descriptions are, if anything, more disturbing. They read not just like they're wrong, but that like they're intentionally wrong.
1. The Communist Manifesto
Summary: Marx and Engels, born in Germany in 1818 and 1820, respectively, were the intellectual godfathers of communism. Engels was the original limousine leftist: A wealthy textile heir, he financed Marx for much of his life. In 1848, the two co-authored The Communist Manifesto as a platform for a group they belonged to called the Communist League. The Manifesto envisions history as a class struggle between oppressed workers and oppressive owners, calling for a workers’ revolution so property, family and nation-states can be abolished and a proletarian Utopia established. The Evil Empire of the Soviet Union put the Manifesto into practice.
God, these people just can't think. Where do we start with this? With the gratuitous and child-like name-calling of Engels as a "limousine leftist?" Or by laughing at the appropriation of Reagan's campily moralistic "Evil Empire," by people who are claiming to be serious scholars? Or by pointing out that, of course, the utopia of the Manifesto had nothing to do with the Soviet Union (and that Marx would have been horrified by it)?
3. Quotations from Chairman Mao
Summary:[...]Aided by compulsory distribution in China, billions were printed. Western leftists were enamored with its Marxist anti-Americanism. “It is the task of the people of the whole world to put an end to the aggression and oppression perpetrated by imperialism, and chiefly by U.S. imperialism,” wrote Mao.
Jesus, these people can't think. Should we bother pointing out that they don't name a single "Western leftist" who was enamoured by "Marxist anti-Americanism?" And that they don't mention more "Western leftists" publicly denounced Mao? (Obviously, Human Events doesn't listen to the Beatles.)
Wait, I think I'm starting to get it. To write pieces like this for Human Events, you copy some high school student's book report and then you throw in a few buzzwords. Hey Human Events, check this out: Moby Dick is the story of the industrious capitalist Captain Ahab, and his relentless pursuit of the leftist, mochaccino-drinking whale, Moby Dick. Even though Moby Dick took Captain Ahab's leg in a violent argument over school prayer, Ahad knows he must destroy Moby Dick to keep him from spying for the Russians.
Can I have a job?
5. Democracy in Education
Summary: John Dewey, who lived from 1859 until 1952, was a “progressive” philosopher and leading advocate for secular humanism in American life, who taught at the University of Chicago and at Columbia. He signed the Humanist Manifesto and rejected traditional religion and moral absolutes. In Democracy and Education, in pompous and opaque prose, he disparaged schooling that focused on traditional character development and endowing children with hard knowledge, and encouraged the teaching of thinking “skills” instead. His views had great influence on the direction of American education--particularly in public schools--and helped nurture the Clinton generation.
Holy shit, these people can't think. What can we say about the scare-quoting of the word "progressive?" It's the let's-put-words-we-don't-like-next-to-the-names-of-people-we-don't-like style of argumentation. Sorry, I mean "argumentation." Yeah, um, um Dewey was a gross old, um, poopie-pants. And he was ugly. And he had bad skin. And bad breath. And he was "progressive." And if you like Dewey, then you must be a "progressive" poopie-pants too. Poopie-pants. I know you are but what am I? Times infinity! Times infinity plus one!
How can we possibly defend poor Dewey against the greivous crime of having writting in "pompous and opaque prose?" (And if that makes a book harmful, why isn't the William F. Buckley entire canon #1?) Should we point out the irony of Human Events criticizing Dewey for encouraging the "teaching of thinking 'skills'?" Should we point out the fact that since they're criticizing Dewey, who most of their readers haven't heard of, they have throw in the word "Clinton" to bring the point home? That one can't help but avoiding the conclusion that Human Events thinks Dewey is responsible for the Clinton Presidency?
7. The Femine Mystique
Summary: In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan, born in 1921, disparaged traditional stay-at-home motherhood as life in “a comfortable concentration camp”--a role that degraded women and denied them true fulfillment in life. She later became founding president of the National Organization for Women. Her original vocation, tellingly, was not stay-at-home motherhood but left-wing journalism. As David Horowitz wrote in a review for Salon.com of Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique by Daniel Horowitz (no relation to David): The author documents that “Friedan was from her college days, and until her mid-30s, a Stalinist Marxist, the political intimate of the leaders of America’s Cold War fifth column and for a time even the lover of a young Communist physicist working on atomic bomb projects in Berkeley’s radiation lab with J. Robert Oppenheimer.”
Great Odin's Raven, these people can't think. Seriously. They make my dog look brilliant and my dog is licking his own ass right now. Is there anything that could possibly be more intellectually shoddy than, instead, of thinking up your own criticism of someone, you quote, not from someone's book, but from a review of someone else's book? If Human Events can't think of 100 words about Betty Freidan, it really makes you wonder whether anyone on the panel has read this book... or any of them really. By the way, the person that they're quoting, David Horowitz (who accuses Freidan of being of being a Stalinist until her mid-30s), was, um, a Marxist until his mid-30s.
8. The Course of Positive Philosophy
Summary: Comte, the product of a royalist Catholic family that survived the French Revolution, turned his back on his political and cultural heritage, announcing as a teenager, “I have naturally ceased to believe in God.” Later, in the six volumes of The Course of Positive Philosophy, he coined the term “sociology.” He did so while theorizing that the human mind had developed beyond “theology” (a belief that there is a God who governs the universe), through “metaphysics” (in this case defined as the French revolutionaries’ reliance on abstract assertions of “rights” without a God), to “positivism,” in which man alone, through scientific observation, could determine the way things ought to be.
By Zeus' beard, these people can't think! Does Human Events really, seriously, mean to suggest that Comte's turning his back on his "political and cultural heritage" is a bad thing? That they would have wanted to him to remain a "royalist Catholic?" I mean, I know conservatives are increasingly authoritarian and all, but I didn't realize that they wanted the Bourbons back on the throne now. So much for the whole "democracy promotion" thing. "Freedom is on the march for Louis XXVII!"
9. Beyond Good and Evil
Summary: An oft-scribbled bit of college-campus graffiti says: “‘God is dead’--Nietzsche” followed by “‘Nietzsche is dead’--God.” Nietzsche’s profession that “God is dead” appeared in his 1882 book, The Gay Science, but under-girded the basic theme of Beyond Good and Evil, which was published four years later. Here Nietzsche argued that men are driven by an amoral “Will to Power,” and that superior men will sweep aside religiously inspired moral rules, which he deemed as artificial as any other moral rules, to craft whatever rules would help them dominate the world around them. “Life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of the strange and weaker, suppression, severity, imposition of one’s own forms, incorporation and, at the least and mildest, exploitation,” he wrote. The Nazis loved Nietzsche.
By all that is true and good, these people can't think! I'm getting embarrassed for them. Is there any doubt that they mention the Nietzsche's book The Gay Science because it includes the word "gay?" Yep, Nietzsche was a gay poopie-pants. And a real doo-doo face. And gay. Really really gay. (Hint: it's the other kind of gay. The title is a translation of the German "Die Froehliche Wissenschaft." You can figure out what froehlich means yourself.) And as for their parting shot, that the "Nazis loved Nietzsche," well, this story is well-known to students of the history of philosophy (hence the reason no one at Human Events knows it), but I'll let Wikipedia tell you:
Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche heavily edited Nietzsche's work in order to promote him as a proto-Nazi thinker (she was herself an ardent German nationalist and pro-Nazi); this bastardization was largely to blame for Nietzsche being associated in the 1930s with the Nazis, who primarily took Elisabeth's deliberately misconstrued versions of his works as one of their main sources.
It is worth noting that Nietzsche's thought largely stands opposed to Nazism. In particular, Nietzsche despised anti-Semitism (which partially led to his falling out with composer Richard Wagner) and nationalism. He took a dim view of German culture as it was in his time, and derided both the state and populism. As the joke goes: "Nietzsche detested Nationalism, Socialism, Germans and mass movements, so naturally he was adopted as the intellectual mascot of the National Socialist German Workers' Party."
Astonishing, no?
Last but certainly not least:
10. General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
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.
By all things bright and beautiful, these people can't think! They say that if you put 100 monkeys in a room, they would eventually type Hamlet. Well, someone must have tried it; no Hamlet, but now we have Human Events. Let's not forget to point out that they manage to squeeze two conservative buzzwords into one sentence ("elite" and "liberal"). Let's not ignore their implication that Keynes' theory is somehow responsible for the Democratic party's scheme to expand government infinitely ("unlimited power!"), despite Richard Nixon's famous statement that "we are all Keynesians now." But we cannot leave our Human Events friend alone before reading their last sentence again:
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.
That's really what they wrote. Seriously, I'm not making it up. Read it again:
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.
It's just too easy. Go read about whose fault the national debt is, if you've been living in a cave for the last 25 years and really don't know already.
-- Michael and Heather
Most excellently outstanding, you two. Pat yourselves on the back or do each other. Oh, wait. That might upset the neocons. Could lead to sex, and we can't have that, now, can we?
Posted by: Michael | June 01, 2005 at 03:04 PM
I'd like to see their list go back a few more years, so they can indict people like Seneca, St. Augustine, and Erasmus for being gay commie hippy pagan Satan-worshippers. Oh, wait. These people really would like to do that, wouldn't they?!
Posted by: lorri | June 01, 2005 at 11:32 PM