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I don’t know what exactly he said, but there’s been a lot of intelligent commentary in the past year or so, about the increasing practice of diagnosing kids as being “on the autistic spectrum” (also called “pervasive developmental disorder”), resulting a huge number of kids being labelled “autistic” who certainly wouldn’t have been given that label 20 years ago. Now a large majority of kids with this diagnosis and it’s shortened label are kids who wouldn’t have been called “autistic” in the past. While the majority certainly do have some genetic/physiological disorder, it’s entirely possible that some of the ones on the very mild end of the “spectrum” are indeed kids whose parents’ permissiveness and other poor parenting practices fully account for the child’s symptoms.

I also suspect that some of these kids would instead be labelled “ADHD” if the diagnosis happened to be made by a doctor who prefers that label. Both groups of labelled kids surely include a lot who simply don’t care to sit still through hours of academic-oriented preschool classes, or to follow orders through hours of “enrichment” activities their parents drag them to (musical instrument lessons, foreign language lessons, regimented sports instruction, etc).

SAVAGE: Now, you want me to tell you my opinion on autism, since I’m not talking about autism? A fraud, a racket. For a long while, we were hearing that every minority child had asthma. Why did they sudden — why was there an asthma epidemic amongst minority children? Because I’ll tell you why: The children got extra welfare if they were disabled, and they got extra help in school. It was a money racket. Everyone went in and was told [fake cough], “When the nurse looks at you, you go [fake cough], ‘I don’t know, the dust got me.’ “ See, everyone had asthma from the minority community. That was number one.

Now, the illness du jour is autism. You know what autism is? I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is.

What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, “Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.”

Autism — everybody has an illness. If I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, “Don’t behave like a fool.” The worst thing he said — “Don’t behave like a fool. Don’t be anybody’s dummy. Don’t sound like an idiot. Don’t act like a girl. Don’t cry.” That’s what I was raised with. That’s what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You’re turning your son into a girl, and you’re turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That’s why we have the politicians we have.

Now you know exactly what he said.