Silly us.
Some people, including myself, probably had over-reacted over the "Ten most harmful books" list. Harmful could mean a lot of things: dangerous, hurtful, and influential. All of the books on the list are arguably influential, and a few include ideas that when implemented into action have been proven by history to be dangerous. But that is not to say harmful idea and books should be banned. And I don't think the humaneventsonline.com ever claimed that was its intention. So until people start to push legislation to ban these books, I would give the benefit of the doubt to them and believe their intention was to merely to sell books.On the other hand, I found it troubling that people who criticized the list were so quick to jump to the argument that these books "should not be banned" and people who want to ban books are stupid/bad. It's one thing to debate whether an idea is harmful, but an entirely different debate to decide what to do with harmful ideas. Let's be clear here, a book can carry harmful ideas, but no book should be banned merely for the words on its page. If one concedes that there are truly harmful ideas worthy of banning, what would be left of the liberal left's ideal that speech should be free?
posted by hedgehog @ 9:34 AM
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