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84 of 111 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Crying in the Wilderness, July 26, 2008
I remember almost thirty years ago a brother-in-law retorting, during a discussion about child-rearing, that he intended to raise his children as wild stallions in a state of nature. I recall commenting that the poor deluded man was merely repeating what he had heard in his sophomore sociology and psychology classes and that, in doing so, he manifested his ignorance of the subject.
One reviewer of Dr. Wiker's book, "10 Books that Screwed up the World," offered the following thought:
"Ideas can certainly be dangerous but, once they are articulated in print, a thinking person has an opportunity to consider them rationally and counter them. This process is much more difficult if we are working from an oral articulation of ideas because orators can sway emotion and equivocate more effectively."
While intended to be a criticism of Professor Wiker ("Is this guy an enemy of free speech?"), the critic, in fact, makes his point; few people have actually read these books. Like my brother-in-law, had they actually read Rousseau, other than Emile, had they actually read Hobbes, other than the usual snippets of Leviathan offered, had they read Darwin's the Descent of Man, Machiavelli's The Prince, etc., they might have been better able to digest the unfounded and destructive utopian visions of Marx, Lenin, Hitler, and assess the illusions conjured by Freud, Sanger, Mead, and Kinsey. The reality is that few who have proffered these writers as icons of enlightened intellectualism, namely the professorial and teaching class, have taken the time to consider their products rationally. And, certainly those to whom it has been asserted that the writings comprise a source of deep reflection beneficial to humanity - essential to an understanding of humanitas - have not taken the opportunity to consider them rationally and counter the assertions. These vapid arguments have seeped into the mainstream only because they were developed by "so-and-so." In other words, the foundation is ipse dixit; the proof is hearsay.
That's why Professor Wiker bemoans the fact that the writings he has singled out have had such profound influence. If writings are not actually read and subjected to rational assessment, it would be better had they never been written. Unfortunately, the writings that Wiker addresses have been and continue to be highly detrimental to the body politic and the human soul. That is the more important reason that they should never have been written.
"10 Books that Screwed up the World" is easily read in a couple of sittings; is readily understood; and, is a must read especially for young people headed for the "castles" of higher learning.
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80 of 107 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Ideas Do Have Consequences, But Only Some of Them Are Exposed Thoroughly , June 1, 2008
Benjamin Wiker, who has authored numerous books of late and manages to thesource website has written another book here dealing with books he alleges have, by the ideas posited by the authors of these text, had horrendous consequences. I have found almost all of the negative reviews absolutely hilarious. I mean, one reviewer rants about President Bush! Likewise, however, I have found most of the extremely positive reviews to be somewhat short sided. I hope my review brings more critical analyses, which I have found only in a couple of other reviews here.
I normally try and keep my reviews short. I mean after all, who wants to read my drivel; but this is one case that I may have to develop a large review. First, on to the negative side: Wiker includes a text in this book that quite puzzles me.
First is his inclusion of Rene Descartes "Discource on Methods" (1637). Wiker claims "He (Descartes) proved God's existence, but only by making it depend on our thinking Him into existence. By his good intentions--if indeed they really were good--he fathered every flavor of self-congratulatory solipsism . . . and made religion a creation of our own ego." He further charges Descartes for opening a new era of skepticism when in effect trying to find away around it. I am not sure this is a fair assessment. While Descartes' starting "point" can be criticized (which Wiker does), Descartes "method" also has some very strong points as well. The problem is when one uses skepticism as a pre-text to only buttress one's presuppositions (which happens often, I agree); however, it does not necessarily follow that one will use Descartes starting point incorrectly. Wiker here does not make his case and in the process he impugns Descartes motives as well. This is also curious since Descartes was a strong defender in the rational belief in God. He developed forms of the cosmological argument and ontological argument. He further demonstrated that truth is objective, knowable, and rational. I would agree that there is fault to find here, (his ontological argument makes an invalid transition from thought to reality), but to make it a runner-up to the most dangerous books is I suggest faulty. On other books, where I agree with him their results and logical outworkings have potential effects, I often found him dealing with side issues instead of the weightier ones.
Also, why I think Kinsey's book is a form of intellectual impersonation, I think the effects of this book have really been minuscule. I posit that the sexual immoral behavior so prevalent today gets as much from the foundations laid by Kinsey as they do from multiple other areas (other media and including again Nietzsche, Freud, etc, etc.). Wiker may be right here, but he does not provide enough research to my satisfaction that most of the intellectual establishment embraced Kinsey's ideas back then or now.
On the positive side, there is much in this book that is good. It first, when it is on target, reminds us that Ideas Have Consequences! Our society does not want to always believe that their idols of intellect have often proved disastrous and in addition, it was the logical outworking of the ideas set forth. Many who look for support for a world without individual responsibility look to the existentialist philosopher Nietzsche, whose Beyond Good and Evil (and other works), has set a many persons and much of modern society on a quest of indulgence - as he asserted "They (the overmen) determine the whether and the to what end of mankind." He even question principles of injure no man (or person) and he rejected the "soft" virtues of love and humility and accept the "hard" male virtues of harshness.
In addition, he rightly includes Darwin's Descent of Man. Wiker here provides Darwin's own words (in context no less, which many others who have sought to disgrace Darwin rarely do), but Wiker shows how Darwin's caveat to his "eugenics" statements does not negate the logical conclusions of his ideas and his ideas have been used for eugenics purposes in the Western world to ill effect (Nazis and eugenics in America). Those who want to decry that this is an unfair conclusion must completely disregard the evidence and logical outworking of ideas.
There is more that can be said. In some respects, I thought this book was right on target, in other respects, I was left wanting more research and analysis. I think that more of a backdrop should have been provided and less books discussed. This would have provided a more robust discussion on the top 10 books and would have made his presentation stronger.
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24 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ideas Matter, September 9, 2008
Serious books contain ideas and arguments which can have a profound impact on the rest of the world. Ideas, in other words, have consequences, and the musing of intellectuals and academics do not stay sealed up in ivory towers, but tend to filter down through the rest of society.
That may not be a bad thing if the original ideas are good ideas, sound ideas, helpful ideas. But when the ideas are bad, then we must expect some bad consequences. And that happens to be the subject of this book: we have had some very influential books with some pretty profoundly bad ideas, and we have seen the bitter fruit of those bad ideas.
Wiker lists ten such books - by Marx, Darwin, Mill, Nietzsche, Lenin, Sanger, Freud, Mead, Hitler and Kinsey - which have been particularly harmful, and then mentions a further five - by Machiavelli, Hobbes, Descartes, Rousseau and Freidan - which also have inflicted their fair share of damage.
The world would be a much better place, argues Wiker, if these fifteen books had never been written. He is not arguing for censorship here, and urges us all to read and study these books, but as he makes clear in some detail, each of these fifteen titles have unleashed a tsunami of bloodshed, violence, oppression, hardship and destruction.
Consider just a few titles. Marx and Engels' 1848 Manifesto of the Communist Party was clearly a book laden with ideas. But they were bad ideas which resulted in untold misery and death. Indeed, the book was no mere treatise on political theory, says Wiker, but a call to action. And action aplenty has been forthcoming from it ever since.
Whether in the form of Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot, the poisoned ideas of this book have resulted in poisoned fruit and the enslavement and death of millions of people. Marxism is "an ideology fashioned according to a man's image," says Wiker, "and forced on history with all the uncompromising power a grand theory can muster".
At the heart of this volume was the commitment to atheism and materialism. Given this worldview, mankind is viewed as simply part of the animal world, and can be treated accordingly. The reductionist ideology of Marxism cannot do proper justice to human beings and human history. Indeed, man becomes a mere abstraction, to be swept aside by the onrushing logic of dialectical materialism.
So Marx set about to create the "New Man" and was quite happy to sacrifice millions of ordinary men to get to his classless utopia. Of course utopia never arrived, and for 70-plus years in the Soviet Union we saw the real fruit of the Marxist worldview.
Consider also Kinsey and his Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, penned 100 years after the Manifesto. The sexologist in many ways laid the foundation for the sexual hedonism which is so all pervasive today. He certainly paved the way for Hugh Hefner and the Playboy revolution. The book "washed away every moral boundary of sexuality with a torrent of charts, graphs, and technical lingo".
But the guise of neutral, disinterested science was just that - a guise. Kinsey was a man on a mission. He had perverted sexual tastes of his own, and his real aim was to get the world to accept his own sexual perversions.
Indeed, Kinsey was a passionate Darwinist (another author discussed in this book) who felt morality had no place in discussions of sex, and whatever is, - sexually speaking - simply ought to be. Nature knows no boundaries, so neither should we. Any and all sexual expressions are just fine, and we need to resist any moral qualms we might have about any expression of sexuality. Thus incest, bestiality, sex with children and all other sexualities are to be embraced and accepted.
Some of the most repulsive aspects of his book had to do with his reports on the sexuality of children. He demonstrates in disgusting detail what he claims are the numerous orgasms infants as young as four months can experience, and how they seem to enjoy it. But how were such studies undertaken, without involving paedophile activity? He in fact used data collected by child molesters. Given what is described in his book, it is a wonder, says Wiker, that Kinsey was not arrested.
The other thirteen books and their authors are not let off the hook either by Wiker. Together they make for some pretty depressing and ugly reading. But we need to be aware of what the intellectual and ruling elites believe, and why. These books have left their mark, and it is not a very pretty mark.
These fifteen books were certainly all great books. But as Wiker reminds us, there is a very real difference between the adjectives "great" and "good". The two terms are not synonymous. These books have been great in the sense of having a profound impact on society and history, but they contain ideologies and ideas which were for the most part not good.
Wiker admittedly writes with a bias - he writes as a Christian. He finds a common thread running through most of these books: they have tended to see the problem in terms of something in the world that needs correcting, instead of something in us that needs major moral and spiritual surgery. Thus these secular revolutionaries have tended to offer flawed analyses of the problems, and proposed coercive utopias as remedies.
But these alternative gardens of Eden and paradises on earth have all been monumental disasters, which have costs millions of lives. These were attempts to make heaven on earth, without realising that man and his nature is the problem, and that man without God simply creates more hell on earth.
Ideas certainly do have consequences, and the bad consequences of these fifteen bad books have clearly affected us all. Worldviews matter, and we need to be aware of how faulty worldviews result in much damage, confusion and injury. Wiker deserves praise for alerting us to the world of bad ideas and their consequences.
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