Liberals have long delighted in passing around stereotypes of the conservative yokel who castigates someone else's character simply to 'own' that person - to make it impossible for a newcomer to succeed through character assassination, for the purposes of creating a guaranteed buyer's market. The root of that stereotype is Henrk Ibsen's play The Master Builder, and if you're a conservative who's faced the usual culture insults, you would no doubt find the plot of that play familiar. It's spread throughout the culture.
With all stereotypes, there is an element of hypocrisy, especially since the so-called 'liberal businessman' can simply say "there ain't no way I would go about a'slanderin' someone - that's right wing! And I ain't right wing!" [This usually calls for a Free Feed.]
More serious, though, is the liberal variant of demagogy which uses adulterated facts and science to keep Johnny 'in his place'. Dr. Thomas Szasz has been battling the most known variant of liberal predation - committment orders based upon false diagnoses of schizophrenia which have been adhered to despite availability of contradictory evidence - for decades, but the first known case of this goes back all the way to the late 1930s. It's also one of the more dubious examples of a "Canadian First."
The Dionne Quintuplets were seized from their parents by the Liberal government in Ontario at the time. Premier Hepburn, in an attempt to make sure he and his gravy boys weren't caught out, spread the 'credit' as liberally as they could, using both economic envy and ethnic bigotry to keep the enslavement of the Quints hidden. This is a process of blame-evasion-through-blame-spreading that the Mafia uses frequently: character assassination all through a community concerning an individual that can't be stood; followed by the "hit;" and then followed by the observation to all and sundry of how many citizens 'participated' in the assault or murder. This shuts everybody up.
Regarding autism specifically, Professor Thomas Sowell noted, as far back as November 5, 1999, that the training for the detection of such a condition is minimal; the checklist test can lead to a child that is simply self-absorbed being labeled autistic.
Or a child that's mis-fitty. A standoffish kid; a kid that takes his schooling a little too seriously (relative to Ace the Quiggan); a kid that's both; a kid that's standoffish because he's there to work; all could be fingered.
As long as there's publicity and dollars to be had; as long as the State gets the authorization to jump on the little misfit that's pissing off both the other kids and their parents; as long as a flawed educational model is continually violated by the performance of kids raised to learn in the correct way, and as long as this damages the prestige of the educational establishment, the above will have the potential of becoming the new hyper-active disorder, in the sense of a diagnosis being used as a weapon.
Watch out!
True.
On the other hand, there are children like my son. I knew very early on he was odd. He got more odd as the years passed. The usual ways of parenting, teaching, relating to him were not very useful. I worried, I prayed and I read everything I could get my hands on.
Finally, when my son was 10 years old, we had a name, a label, a diagnosis. The "only" thing that did was help me find people who could understand him and help me to understand him. It helped me to find out that I am not a bad mother and it helped him to know that he isn't stupid, bad or crazy.
A name is whatever you make it be. For some, it may be incorrect or negative. For others it is a light in a very dark place.