It's a good article, but I do have one problem with it, where she says "as long as schools and society simultaneously place the rights of the mentally ill above other citizens. . ."
I like to think that all of us who haven't committed any crimes have the right not to be pulled off the street and incarcerated, not just the mentally ill. I seriously hope that she isn't proposing that government officials be given the authority to haul in anybody that they deem to be "insane" and therefore a "danger to the public". That's much too loose of a standard, they'd be able to pick up pretty much anybody that the government found annoying or inconvenient.
Maybe it would reduce the already-low number of people that are killed or injured in attacks by the insane to round up all of the approximately 1-2 million schizophrenics in the US (0.3-0.7% of the population), along with probably another 2-3 million "false positives" that might get rounded up just because they were annoying to the government. But would it be worth it?
It's a good article, but I do have one problem with it, where she says "as long as schools and society simultaneously place the rights of the mentally ill above other citizens. . ."
ReplyDeleteI like to think that all of us who haven't committed any crimes have the right not to be pulled off the street and incarcerated, not just the mentally ill. I seriously hope that she isn't proposing that government officials be given the authority to haul in anybody that they deem to be "insane" and therefore a "danger to the public". That's much too loose of a standard, they'd be able to pick up pretty much anybody that the government found annoying or inconvenient.
Maybe it would reduce the already-low number of people that are killed or injured in attacks by the insane to round up all of the approximately 1-2 million schizophrenics in the US (0.3-0.7% of the population), along with probably another 2-3 million "false positives" that might get rounded up just because they were annoying to the government. But would it be worth it?
Tim, this is a great point and worthy of a blog post.
ReplyDelete