Love of Liberty is Considered a Mental Illness

Just a few generations ago, if a person needed a credible witness to establish their personal character in a court of law, they would bring in a member of the clergy.  Today when a credible witness is needed to testify regarding another person's character, we bring in a psychiatrist.  While this may appear to be a natural consequence of the progression of modern science, medicine and law, there is a very real danger that accompanies this shift.  When psychiatry becomes an arm of the state, it enables the abusers of state power to marginalize and to get rid of unwanted people.

This is not as recent a trend as many would believe, but according to Dr. Thomas S. Szasz, since it's  development nearly 300 years ago, psychiatry has consistently served as an arm of the law and has provided a means of dealing with those deemed inconvenient by the state.  But what the state considers a nuisance isn't strictly limited to deviants, or those with true mental defects.  It also applies to those who, for a variety of reasons, refuse to submit unconditionally to the state's authority or demands.

Let that sink in for a moment.

You don't have to be schizophrenic, or anti-social or criminally insane for state experts to pronounce you mentally ill and therefore a ward of the state.  If you are a free thinker, a constitutionalist, an Oath Keeper, a non-conformist, a peaceful activist or resistor, or if you practice any degree of civil disobedience or question authority--it's official--your disorder is now listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM-IV-TR Fourth Edition.

Courtesy: UWSGO.com

Modern psychiatry calls your illness Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and it's not just for kids who won't eat their broccoli.  Take a few minutes and read for yourself this 3 page excerpt from the DSM-IV-TR Fourth Edition describing ODD and its diagnostic features.

UWSGO.com highlights some of the key ideas from the excerpt that should get the attention of anyone who considers it their duty to stand for correct principles even if it requires swimming against the tide of public opinion:

The essential feature of Oppositional Defiant Disorder is a recurrent pattern of negativistic, defiant, disobedient. and hostile behavior toward authority figures that persists for at least 6 months...

Negativistic and defiant behaviors are expressed by persistent Stubbornness, resistance to directions, and unwillingness to compromise, give in, or negotiate with adults or peers. Defiance may also include deliberate or persistent testing of limits, usually by ignoring orders, arguing, and failing to accept blame for misdeeds. Hostility can be directed at adults or peers and is shown by deliberately annoying others or by verbal aggression (usually without the more serious physical aggression seen in Conduct Disorder)...  

Defiance may also include deliberate or persistent testing of limits, usually by ignoring orders, arguing, and failing to accept blame for misdeeds...

I may be oversimplifying what the psych manual is saying but it sounds a lot like if you're not willing to shut up, compromise, conform and go along with those who are exercising (state) authority over you, then you may be diagnosed as the ODD man out.  Pun intended.

Question the wisdom of being electronically strip searched and/or physically groped in order to board a commercial airline flight and you will be singled out for "special attention."  Refuse an order to confiscate lawfully owned firearms from private citizens who have committed no crime and you are a prime candidate for deep scrutiny of your mental health.  Engage in any form of civil disobedience, free thinking or non-conformity (sorry, Rosa Parks) and you will be treated as a direct threat to the authority of those in power.

When medicine and the state become bedfellows, there is a tendency for newly "discovered" diseases to have political implications.  This is especially true when it comes to the American Psychiatric Association and its tendency to vote disorders and diseases in or out of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual by a simple show of hands.  A classic example of this was the vote in 1973 by the APA to remove homosexuality as an abnormal behavior from DSM II after intense lobbying by pro-homosexual activists.  Scientific research was not the basis for this vote, it was a purely political move and it has provided a toehold for the homosexual lobby to achieve a surprising amount of political power since then.

Note how often those who refuse to call homosexual behavior normal and acceptable are "diagnosed" as homophobic by their opponents.  They are accused, using the language of psychiatry, of suffering from an irrational, clinical fear of homosexuals.  In other words, disagreement equals a mental disorder.

How many children sit in a drug-induced stupor in government schools because their teacher or school counselor, in conjunction with health officials, became annoyed at their "hyperactive" behavior and followed the psychiatric playbook of drugging them into submission?

Even gun owners are finding themselves increasingly painted into a corner where among the criteria by which the state dictates whether one may legally possess or purchase a firearm is the question of whether the individual has ever been "adjudicated as mentally defective or committed to a mental institution."  How difficult would it be to expand the definitions of what makes one "mentally defective" to include ODD?  Again, the concern here is that when government and Psychiatry team up to establish what constitutes acceptable attitudes and what is considered "anti-social", the conclusions always seem to miraculously fall in favor of desired government result.  Purely by coincidence, of course.

Under the brutal leadership of Joseph Stalin, millions of Russians found themselves in the gulag for what was ambiguously referred to as "anti-Soviet" thinking or activities.  The use of Psychiatry as a tool of oppression has been used by countless dictators whose experts eagerly labeled dissidents as mentally ill as a means of discouraging those who might be tempted to challenge the regime's authority.  There is a reason why despotic governments have favored some form of so-called re-education as a means of helping their subjects get their thinking right.  The problem with the dissidents, you see, is all in their heads.

Involuntary commitment and coerced or drugging non-conformists to solve their mental problems is a handy way to keep those who would make trouble for the regime under the state's control and effectively marginalized from society.  After all, who are you going to believe, the government and its experts, or that free-thinking lunatic in the straitjacket?

Here's something to consider from Dr. Szasz on the separation of Psychiatry & the state:

If we recognize that "mental illness" is a metaphor for disapproved thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, we are compelled to recognize as well that the primary function of Psychiatry is to control thought, mood, and behavior. Hence, like Church and State, Psychiatry and the State ought to be separated by a "wall." At the same time, the State ought not to interfere with mental health practices between consenting adults. The role of psychiatrists and mental health experts with regard to law, the school system, and other organizations ought to be similar to the role of clergymen in those situations.    

 The battle for free agency is being fought on many levels.  It's critically important to know your opponent and his methods; especially those tactics that have been artfully concealed in plain sight.