coerced treatment

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Thu Jun 14 12:37:59 PDT 2001


At 03:02 PM 6/14/01 -0400, Gordon wrote:
>If the Left is the party of freedom and equality, and the
>Right the party of power, authority, social status, private
>wealth, hierarchical order and so on, then the concept of the

That is the grossest mischaracterisation I've seen for some time. It fits Marx's characterisation of religion (and economic theory): ours is god-given (or natural), theirs is man-made. We the lefties are for all the good things, they the rightwingers are fore all the bad thing .... gimme a break. Where did you see any self-respecting rightist openly defending authoritarianism?

The righwingers are also defining themselves as a party of freedom and equality - except that they define freedom as economic pursuit free of social intervention and equality as the ability to make a judgment on one's own - precisely the same kinds of thing on which the anti-treatment crowd base their claims. The left defines freedom and equality differently, not as freedom from intervention, but as freedom to develop ones full human potential - which can be guaranteed only collectively and equality as as equitabele distribution of all social resources. In a word, the difference between left and right is not that between freedom lovers and freedom haters, but between socialists and individualists - and that goes to the quintessence of the debate on the "rights" of people with mental disorders.

wojtek



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