Really? What is the proper use of Mein Kampf?

If you go that route I don't see why you wouldn't make the same claims about speeches and the like. In which case you've completely thrown out the legal concepts of incitement to violence, defamation, libel and the like.

So I think this goes too far. Books themselves are vehicles of communication and if the lead to behaviorial changes that a resonable person would predict then I don't see why the book (or newspaper) couldn't be found responsible and therefore the author of the book. I can think of many examples where this is a reasonable thing to do. Defame someone in a newspaper and if that gets them unjustly convicted of a crime by tainting the jury pool then I don't see how causally you could ONLY blame the author of the article. After all if the newspaper didn't exist then the information would not have been communicated as effectively.

In the case of Marxism the philosophy itself is responsible for much harm without the extraneous evils perpetrated by some of the most powerful leaders. Strictly following Marxian economic doctrine naturally leads to starvation, poverty an the like. It also shares with Nazism and other vile ideologies the kind of scapegoating that naturally leads humans to do other harm.

Of course no book or philosophy can be morally responsible in and of itself. We certainly aren't going to go around punishing books. Nor does the fact that I have a Quran mean that it is responsible for any evil sitting on my bookshelf. It isn't responsible for any specific act of evil till someone picks it up, reads it, believes it, then acts on the evil perscriptions therein.

Marxs books have in many cases been responsible for evil in just this way causally.

Those two have royally screwed up the world.

I've been sent two lists of "10 Books That Screwed Up the World", and I'm not very impressed with either of them. The first is from a new book by Benjamin Wanker Wiker of the same title, published by......

Regards, C

"Don’t Wear That Mini to Mass" Crisis (April 2001)

"Drawing a Hemline: Sexual Modesty and the Pursuit of Wisdom" Crisis (July/August 2000)

OMG, the stupid, it burns.

Now, I don't know if I agree w/ JJ that the satirical nature of The Prince is really an agreed-upon fact. It's a theory about the book, but I for one have never thought that it's really all that different from the Discourses -- different audiences seem to matter.

I also wonder how The Golden Bough failed to make the cut, unless teaching that Christianity is one superstition among many is less pernicious than the alleged misdeeds of the listed books.

--Btw, the Amazon reviews are a hoot, not to be missed -- click JJ's link in the post.

So the 'Books don't kill people, People kill people' argument holds.

I'm pretty sure War and Peace could kill someone, depending on velocity.