re: #385 Blind Frog Belly White

My wingnut cousin keeps liking posts from Breitbart’s Rotting Corpse like this one:

Apparently, studying a book which probably had more impact on the last 150 years than just about any other is a sign of being a commie, or something. I really do think that they would limit free speech if they could, because they don’t trust that Democracy, Capitalism, and Liberty would win out if everyone learned about other beliefs/systems.

Haven’t these guys heard of Know Thy Enemy?

For the record, when I worked in college bookstores back in the 80s-90s at a heuuuuge state university, the Communist Manifesto was sold as part of the “The Marx-Engels Reader” (W.W. Norton), a trade paperback with a bright red cover (of course). It was not taught in lower level courses, but if you went into upper division history or other social sciences, it was likely you’d end up having to read part of it. I know I did.

But we sold far, far more small paperback copies of Plato, Aristotle and other philosophers. The business school required all majors to take 12 hours of philosophy, not that I think it helped the otherwise generally amoral students enrolled in the program.