The link to the list seems to be going the rounds on the Internet right now; I, too, had seen it and frothed at the mouth in my own LJ over so much (academically sanctioned) idiocy, but the passage from On Liberty is probably the very best antidote to that kind of braindead polemics.
The funny thing is that even John Milton -- not only John Stuart Mills -- would appear like a flaming liberal next to the person who wrote the article and the scholars who must have endorsed it. While Milton adhered to the notion of "harmful" and "dangerous" books, he still advocated engaging with their ideas.
I can't see any intellectual engagement here, only oversimplifying condemnations à la "The Nazis liked Nietzsche" (well, their own watered-down version of some of his ideas without the philosophical background/context), "There were over 10 million copies of Mein Kampf in Germany" (not arguing that the content of this book turned out to be very harmful, only pointing out that you simply got Mein Kampf for free on many occasions during the Third Reich), "Betty Friedan was a radical left-wing journalist" (so what?) and "she did not choose a career as a housewife and mother" (I've read an article about her that described how her husband used to beat her, but also stated how proud she was of her son).
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2005-06-02 08:21 am (UTC)The link to the list seems to be going the rounds on the Internet right now; I, too, had seen it and frothed at the mouth in my own LJ over so much (academically sanctioned) idiocy, but the passage from On Liberty is probably the very best antidote to that kind of braindead polemics.
The funny thing is that even John Milton -- not only John Stuart Mills -- would appear like a flaming liberal next to the person who wrote the article and the scholars who must have endorsed it. While Milton adhered to the notion of "harmful" and "dangerous" books, he still advocated engaging with their ideas.
I can't see any intellectual engagement here, only oversimplifying condemnations à la "The Nazis liked Nietzsche" (well, their own watered-down version of some of his ideas without the philosophical background/context), "There were over 10 million copies of Mein Kampf in Germany" (not arguing that the content of this book turned out to be very harmful, only pointing out that you simply got Mein Kampf for free on many occasions during the Third Reich), "Betty Friedan was a radical left-wing journalist" (so what?) and "she did not choose a career as a housewife and mother" (I've read an article about her that described how her husband used to beat her, but also stated how proud she was of her son).