“To listen to the nation’s addiction and psychiatric gurus is to come to believe that crimes are caused, not committed. Perpetrators don’t do the crime, but are driven to their dirty deeds by a confluence of uncontrollable factors, victims of societal forces or organic brain disease.”
A well-aimed bullet would have stopped Cho. But gun-free zones are not the only areas in need of reclamation. The concept of the individual as a responsible, self-determining agent is the foundation of a free society. Liberty requires that psychiatric mumbo-jumbo not be allowed to oust morality…”

The excerpt is from my new WorldNetDaily.com column, “Evil, Not Ill.” It leads the Commentary Page. Barely-a-Blog participants will be familiar with some of the arguments.

Update: The indefatigable Thomas Szasz, the world’s leading critic of psychiatry, liked the following lines from my column best:

“Police and campus authorities responded to Cho’s stalking, pyromania, and voyeurism by medicalizing his misbehavior. As the nation’s pseudo-experts generally advise, Cho was referred to a mental health facility.”

I’d like to welcome Robert Reavis to Barely a Blog. He is a District Judge in the American “Heartland.” His colorful post on BAB today gives me a fresh appreciation of the many fabulous Americans I’ve “met” through my writing.

Now, with respect to the criminal Cho. Consider: the Korean wing of his family, an aunt to be specific, has called him, “that idiot.”? Koreans back home have a strong conservative streak. Saving face, personal pride and dignity are of the utmost importance to them. The move to the US probably severed the kind of family and community structures and value systems that might have sorted this misfit out early on in life.
Suddenly the university is not permitted to–and has no desire to–divulge Cho’s shenanigans to his family. The family is excluded. The progressives on campus consider his misbehavior a private “medical” affair. Back in Korea, the family would have handled the boy early on. They’d have realized he was severely limited —something our educational geniuses didn’t–and made clear to him what they’d tolerate from him; punishing his first sign of aggression, and placing him in a strict work environment–a dry cleaning business perhaps, not a college. A place where he’d do repetitive, calming, rote activity.
Yeah, the multicultural immigrant experience is not such a good thing for the immigrant who hails from adaptive, strong communities and families.
I was intrigued, but not surprised, to learn, moreover, that the incidence of mental health problems among Koreans is extremely low. Could that correlate with the fact that that culture views it as a stigma? Hence the more traditional Korean gets the message and doesn’t act out, as he would in the broader American society. Koreans remain well-functioning because there is no positive reinforcement associated with acting loopy.
In popular American culture, the mental disease construct has been so popularized and entrenched by the pseudo-experts that it is associated with rewards: attention, etc. To claim a mental disease is to be seen as good, virtuous, courageous, a hero struggling against all odds (all rubbish, of course).