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To: Eva
Liberalism is far too dignified a term for fascsist control freaks.

No kidding! The Left's kidnapping of the word "liberal" is grevious. I wish we could take that one back from them.

18 posted on 08/02/2003 10:13:29 AM PDT by Yardstick
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To: Yardstick
Thomas Szasz, a famous New York MD and psychiatrist, demolished this politics-posing-as-social-science stuff years ago. A distinguished psychiatrist, he has written several books such as "The Myth of Mental Illness." His argument is that people who behave differently from us should not be classified as "mentally ill" but simply as socially annoying. Public policies concerning differences in behavior, and whether these differences should be constrained, are ultimately based on beliefs of right and wrong, that is - based on one's moral beliefs, politics, and ethics. 'Medical Science', according to Szasz, is a discipline that has nothing to do with Judging behavior, per se. It simply describes and classifies it in an objective fashion, and sometimes can ascribe observable causes (sources) for it. Ethics concerns personal judgments -- of whether the conduct is ultimately tolerable (or not), by other members of society, in light of the behaviors' effects on others, and other long-term impacts & considerations for the society and economic system.

Szasz is incredibly persuasive. Though controversial when he first started writing decades ago, he is widely respected today. I have seen him cited in mainstream college Psych. textbooks.


Liberals who dress their normative beliefs in pseudo-science are doing what most coercive totalitarians have historically done: apply force & threats where argument has failed. Instead of debating the pros & cons of their social beliefs and political ideology on social order, juvenile conduct, and economic growth, they call the opponent 'mentally ill,' pick up their marbles and go home.

Pathetic ...and chilling.


28 posted on 08/02/2003 10:46:46 AM PDT by 4Liberty (Hillary stays w/ an assaulter because she 'couldn't' make it alone: what a role-model for women)
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