In the 1970s – during Leonid Brezhnev’s kinder, gentler version of the Soviet Union – the gulags of the Lenin and Stalin regimes were largely replaced by “psychiatric hospitals”.
Since disssent from government was considered a mental illness in the Soviet Union, naturally, dissidents needed “treatment”.
Author Dinesh D’Souza – one of the Obama administration’s most prolific and articulate dissidents – got caught up a few years ago in one of the web of speech rationing laws. These laws – commonly referred to as “campaign-finance laws” – are intended to, and eventually will, make all political speech and activity, including (I predict) this blog, potentially prosecutable.
Judges and bureaucrats referring to speech as “illegal” is nothing new; it’s the battle freedom will always have to fight.
But using the psychiatric profession to beat down dissent? It’s baaaack; D’Souza’s judge has ordered him, for a third time, to seek psychiatric treatment:
D’Souza’s defense counsel Benjamin Brafman provided evidence to the court that the psychiatrist D’Souza was ordered to see found no indication of depression or reason for medication. In addition, the psychologist D’Souza subsequently consulted provided a written statement concluding there was no need to continue the consultation, because D’Souza was psychologically normal and well adjusted.
But Judge Berman, who was appointed by Bill Clinton, disagreed, effectively overruling the judgment of the two licensed psychological counselors the U.S. probation department had approved as part of D’Souza’s criminal sentence.
“I only insisted on psychological counseling as part of Mr. D’Souza’s sentence because I wanted to be helpful,” the judge explained. “I am requiring Mr. D’Souza to see a new psychological counselor and to continue the weekly psychological consultation not as part of his punishment or to be retributive.
Point of basic logic to Judge Berman: if you’re “requiring” the treatment, you’re not doing it to be helpful.
It’s similar to what bakers/photographers who refuse to participate in homosexual marriage ceremonies are forced to do.
-Forced to attend re-education class
-Then report back to the court periodically on what you learned at re-education camp and how you are living in accordance to said class
It’s coming; and soon.
“Point of basic logic to Judge Berman: if you’re “requiring” the treatment, you’re not doing it to be helpful.”
but thats how progressives help us poor benighted conservatives, by “requiring” the solution they know is best for us, like this : http://www.hrc.org/blog/entry/hud-publishes-affirmatively-furthering-fair-housing-rule
its called the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule that will establish quotas of minority/victim/grievance class members that MUST be housed in your neighborhood. Doesn’t sound excessively terrible until you try to sell your house to a white/straight/christian person and the government kills the sale because it exceeds the quota.
Seems to me it would be unethical for a mental health provider to get involved in something like this.
That judge is a real loony. It looks like he got his undergrad in psychology. This makes me wonder how he ever got into law school and passed the bar — psychology ain’t rocket science.
Knowing nothing else about the judge, I would bet that he got his psychology degree in the 70s-early 80s. This was an era when psychologists, in order to make their field more relevant (e.g., a better career choice), taught that virtually all unpleasant human behavior was due to psychological disorders that could be “fixed” with the right mix of mental voodoo.
Apart from the judge’s background, it at least ought to be a crime to inflict a sentence not justified by the law and evidence. At the very least, D’Souza has ample grounds for appeal for this very reason, and I’d dare suggest that this judge ought to get the full Nifong for this.
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What happened? Did USSR win the Cold War? Was I asleep all these years? I escaped one fucking hell just to find myself being dragged back?
JPA; but you knew a “Cancer Ward” would be part of Obamacare, didn’t you?
(friend of mine went to the USSR bookstore at a World’s Fair a while back–Vancouver I think–and asked for “Gulag Archepelago”, “Cancer Ward”, and such….and was rather testily informed that they didn’t carry any books by Solzhenitsyn there for some odd reason)