Posted on 05/27/2005 12:52:53 PM PDT by neverdem
Interesting to read all the opinions about the insanity defense, but I notice that not one poster has displayed the slightest idea of how legal insanity is defined, or what the consequences of the verdict turn out to be. Dullness rules, tonight.
McNaughton Rule placemarker.
Do you have a preference as to how legal insanity should be defined? What about smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol?
Agree in total.
While I agree with you on your personal choice of method of self defense (Sig Sauer) I disagree with your assessment of T.S. He was trained as a doctor and as a psychiatrist, so he is one. If he quotes his own data, it is correct. If you don't believe that, check it out; I did. His main tool in disecting the profession is his amazing ability to apply logic. He's like the Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter of the medical world.
Similarly, I worked in my profession for 26 years and consider it, as applied in the US, an indirect, parasitic rip-off of taxpayers. Even though I regard my former profession as a crock of BS, I still have the credentials, experience, and title. I use these to make my points in discourse.
Szasz came to the conclusion that his profession was bogus. I've been in a position to see psychiatry applied to adolescent boys, and I agree that psychiatry and mental illness are bogus. I regard the former as a scam and the latter as a cop out.
I achieved much more with boys when I got them off of the prescribed dope; this enabled me to help them confront their behavior, acknowledge their problems, face the fact that what was done was done, and finally to GET OVER IT and develop strategies for coping and plans for personal advancement. It works, but it takes time. The dope doesn't work, it just modifies behavior so that other people aren't inconvenienced by it. All a psychiatrist does is prescribe "meds.".
Exactly why we entered the slippery slope when we take justice away from the public and put it in the hands of doctors.
Psychiatry/-ology are PSEUDOSCIENCES.
All murderers should be executed, and their "mental state" should be irrelevant.
Everyone is personally responsible for their actions, PERIOD.
"Mental disorder" is a crock and headshrinkers are the enablers of criminal filth and weakling weenies who can't get their own acts together.
"Anyone who'd go to a psychiatrist needs to have their head examined."
-Groucho Marx
(The ONLY Marxist theory I agree with, hehehe.!)
Because the concept of LAW AND ORDER in society dictates that these murderers be executed.
Regardless of their phony-baloney excuses, like non-existant insanities.
What are you, a weenie-who-can't-get-their-act-together lover?
Then keep these loons in jail or the nuthouse where they belong. Better yet, when they kill, execute them.
Society's right to NOT be sava=ged by them trumps any right of some wacko.
Get it?
Until you deal with deep clinical depression, or see what happens to a person in a manic high (or experience it for that matter) or other mental problem, you have NO RIGHT to say what we feel and experience is hogwash. That's like saying every soldier with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is faking it. It isn't true. These things are real, and frequently, without treatment, incapacitating, every bit as much as a stroke, or being under the influence of various medications affect how a person reacts.
Now, being responsible for actions is different than being sick with a mental problem. People do cop out.
These are two different things.
Psychiatry is just beginnng to move into a true science of what's going on in the brain, and there still is a lot of hoodoo in it, but it's a complicated set of problems, and with the recognition that there are medicines that relieve these symptoms, we are on the right track to turning it into a good real science.
Mental illnesses are physical illnesses that affect how we react to, perceive and analyze and deal with reality. They are not a failure of will, usually, although as a coping mechanism, one can use it as an excuse to not getting one's life together, even when symptoms are controlled.
This reminds me once when my dad was a little boy, and got sent home from school because he had an allergic dermatitis rash. The school principle called my grandmother up and told her to take my dad home because he had chicken pox. When my grandmother explained it was just allergies, the principle told her, "I don't believe in allergies"
But allergies are very real. Mental illnesses are very real.
That's just crazy.
Yes, but the question that vexes me is, are women with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder faking it?
Most "insanity" is just plain maliciousness and misplaced priorities.
I think there is real insanity.
But that is manifested in an inability to function, not crime and mayhem.>>>>>>
Actually insanity is a legal term and has nothing to do with inability to function, it refers to the inability to distinguish right from wrong and conform one's behaviour accordingly.
Hmmm.....how about post-traumatic Laz disorder?
I don't think that can be faked....;-)
Normally, that's not the way I would characterize myself. But if it makes you feel better, you go ahead and think that.
You appear to be impersonating a DU plant, whose mission is to make posts designed to make conservatives look stupid. Keep up the good work!
ping
"Yes, but the question that vexes me is, are women with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder faking it?"
Yes, and you guys can't tell, can you?
Placing justice in the hands of the people is not a comforting thought.
Sean Hannity had "Flipper", who is an avowed liberal, former producer of his radio show, and who was working in a fill-in status, interview folks outside Madison Square Garden yesterday for Sean's "Man on the Street" intereview segment.
Folks were asked what was the reason for Memorial Day, who fought in the (American) Civil War, and what countries did we fight in World War II. Their knowledge of such basic facts of American History was abysmal.
We can tell.
We just don't care.
Well, some jury verdicts scare me too. But you're guaranteed a tyranny if justice is removed to a panel of "experts".
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