THE CLOSING OF THE CONSERVATIVE MIND

I guess it’s not crazy to come up with a list of the “ten most harmful books” of the last two centuries. But it’s not a sign of intellectual health. It implies that some ideas are worth suppressing for the harm they might do. To my mind, an argument or a book should be read with as open a mind as possible. Its errors or moral failings are better brought to light by exposure than buried. But some of today’s conservative intellectuals believe otherwise; and this list by “Human Events” contributors is a disturbing one, and a sign of increasing morbidity in conservative intellectual circles. Sure, it’s hard to dispute the evil power of hackish tracts like Mein Kampf or Mao’s Little Red Book. (I’m surprised the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ didn’t make the grade.) But Darwin and Nietzsche, two of the greatest minds in Western civilization, whose works still mesmerize and intrigue smart readers and whose ideas are subject to countless interpretations? And Mill and Keynes and Freud? Please. If I were a young conservative mind, the first thing I’d do is read these Indexed books and make my own mind up. It should be possible to be a conservative with a genuinely liberal approach to intellectual inquiry. And that excludes exclusion of ideas deemed “harmful.”