>As the psychologist Philip Zimbardo once commented, when one person is
>having delusions, that person is committed to an institution, but if a
>group of people is having delusions, those delusions suddently become a
>"point of view" protected by the Constitution. I am pretty sure he had
>the gun toting defenders of the Amerikkkan way of life in mind.
Sounds very odd from Zimbardo, certainly one of psychology's brighter sparks. I know that, in saner moments, he is well aware that 'reality' and 'delusion' are both _social_ rather than objective constructs. We say a person is 'delusional' because that person holds a socially-unacceptable view of the world, not because we can necessarily prove them to be wrong. (We used to use the term 'heretic' instead, but modern persecution prefers the language of science :-) )
The classic observation about delusion is the one about how when we talk to God, we're praying...but when God talks to us, we're delusional.
Doubtless some individual NRA members are paranoid, but it's not clear to me that all people are wrong, who suspect the motives of the folk in power. Goddess help the members of this list if that were so! :-)
=margaret