On the BorderLine » Individualism

Individual Rights Again At Risk In Colorado (and it may be coming to your state soon).

Flashy — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:54:51 +0000

Dr. Diana Hsieh writes today:

Once again, the religious right is launching a massive assault on reproductive rights in Colorado — and in other states too — by demanding for full legal rights for fertilized eggs. Ari Armstrong and I are asking for your help to fund an updated policy paper explaining the moral and practical evils of Colorado’s new “personhood” amendment.

In 2008, the theocrats of the religious right gathered the requisite signatures to put a “personhood” amendment on Colorado’s ballot. Known as Amendment 48, this proposed amendment to the state constitution sought to define a fertilized egg as a person with full legal rights in the Colorado constitution. Amendment 48 was defeated resoundingly with 73% against and 27% in favor.

Unfortunately, the crusade for “personhood” did not perish with Amendment 48. Instead, the crusaders went national, expanding the activity of Personhood USA to over 30 states. They’re back in Colorado for the 2010 election with Amendment 62, a slightly modified version of Amendment 48.

Full remarks here – take a moment to pledge your opposition to this outrageous piece of anti-individual rights legislation

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Citizen Jane — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:40:48 +0000

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Diana Hsieh on Hope and Change…

Flashy — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:15:43 +0000

Diana Hsieh (NoodleFood), who has a PHD in Philosophy from the University of Colorado, discusses how we ought to beware the buzz words of the statists who would take your liberty away using with catch phrases such as, “it’s for the children”, “upholding moral standards”, or “protecting us from harm.”

Dr. Hsieh’s videocast is a pleasing diversion from the gobbledygook all around us!

Individual Rights Again At Risk In Colorado (and it may be coming to your state soon).
Dr. Diana Hsieh writes today: Once again, the religious right is launching a ...
Obama: A Condescending Prick
Finally, someone in the media with the nerve to articulate the fact that Oba...

Jack Webb “Schools” Obama

Citizen Joe — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:45:12 +0000

Farve – Pants on the Ground!

In the Know — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 22:51:38 +0000

Glen Beck on the history of Progressives

Lieutenant Dan — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:15:00 +0000

Capitalism is not to blame for the oil spill
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More Stench – Need We Say More??
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Russian Mosin Nagant

admin — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 06:48:00 +0000

The Best Deal in Collectible Surplus Firearms is Back! Original Russian Mosin Nagant model 1891/30 7.62×54R rifles. Features the original Russian codes on Receiver, Bbl & Stock. Includes accessories as shown, though they may very slightly in size, shape, condition, and color. Arsenally refinished after WWII to Excellent Condition. Bores may be a little dark, but will have strong rifling and will be great shooters.

The Soviet Union collected these after the 2nd World War and reconditioned the actions and barrels. They then dipped them in Cosmoline for storage in barrels and buried them along the borders in the old Soviet Satellite countries. During the cold war they were the guns that were going to be used against the western invasion. There were millions upon millions of these buried. Since the cold war ended, entrepreneurs in many countries started digging the barrels up and legally importing them to the United States. You can get one for as cheap as $79 at AIM Surplus.

With a little cleanup of the Cosmoline these babies are looking for a home. What is Cosmoline? Cosmoline is a “petrolatum-base corrosion preventative compound,” to use the words of MIL-C-11796C, the US Government specification for Cosmoline. Its a beefier cousin of Vaseline petroleum jelly. It comes in three classes. Class 3 is the variety used to preserve military small arms. American Cosmoline is specifically formulated not to stain the materials it is preserving. Its flash point, the temperature at which it will burn, is 350 degrees Fahrenheit. It melts at 135 degrees F. It penetrates permeable substances like wood to a depth of 0.2 to 0.25 millimeters. It is stable between a range of 255 degrees F. and 40 degrees F. It will protect anything coated with it indefinitely anywhere on the planets surface. Thats why military establishments around the world adopted it for preserving firearms.

These are a great piece of world history and would make a fine addition to your collection. As with any firearm that is purchased through a business, you need to have it shipped to someone holding a Federal Firearms License. You can find one through your local gun club.

You can find out more about Mosin-Nagants at Gun and Game and ammunition is extremely reasonable at $89.97 for 440 rounds.

Wisconsin Attorney General Voices Support for Open Carry!

Citizen Joe — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:38:44 +0000

Issues Advisory Memorandum to Prosecutors and Law Enforcement

Yesterday, Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen (R) released an Advisory Memorandum of great interest and importance to Wisconsins law-abiding gun owners.

The Attorney Generals memorandum states that it is not unlawful to openly carry a firearm in the state of Wisconsin and that those persons who choose to do so should not be charged with disorderly conduct.

This issue has come up numerous times over the last several months in the Badger State. Several cases have been heard but not a single judge has found reason or precedent to prosecute these law-abiding citizens.

To read Attorney General Van Hollens Advisory Memorandum, please click here

Dr. John Lewis – Charlotte Tea Party

bildanielson — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:18:29 +0000

I suspect there will be more posts regarding Tea Parties, but having personally met Dr. Lewis recently (in Fort Collins, Co at a Young Aristotle Competition) I can personally attest to this man’s incredible intellect for, grasp, and knowledge of history (bio here)…

Transcript of video 1 below, h/t to capmag..

But to do this right, we need to understand what it means. So I want to think back for a moment to what happened over 200 years ago, at the time of the original Boston Tea Party.

The Founders of this nation brought forth a radical idea. It was truly radical, practiced nowhere before this time.

This idea was the Rights of Man. The Founders saw each of us as endowed with certain inalienable rights, rights that may not be separated from our nature as autonomous beings.

These inalienable rights are:

The Right to Life–the right to live your own life, to choose your own goals, and to preserve your own independent existence.

The Right to Liberty, which is the right to act to achieve your goals, without coercion by other men.

The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness, to act to achieve your own success, your own prosperity, and your own happiness, for your own sake.

And the Right to Propertythe right to gain, keep, and enjoy, the material products of your efforts.

Unless Im mistaken I dont see anything here about a right to happiness. I see a right to the pursuit of happiness: the right to take the actions needed to attain ones own happiness. Nor do I see any rights to things at allno rights to food, clothing, healthcare or diapers. There is only a right to act to achieve those things. This is called freedom.

These rights to actthe rights to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happinessare founded on a certain view of man. Each of us is an individual, autonomous, moral being, with the right to choose his own values and capable of directing his own life.

Look at the person next to you, and look in the mirrordo you see the individual sovereign human being, existing for his own sake, with the right to live, to love, and to act?

This ideathe Founders idea of the individual Rights of Manled to a radical view of government. Government was not to be inherited by the force of an entrenched aristocracy as in Europe, imposed by the divine right of kings through generations of oppression, or enforced by the force of a club.

Government in America was to be designed and instituted by thinking men, for a single purpose: to protect and defend the Rights of Man.

This is what the American Declaration of Independence says: To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men. Thinking men, armed with the idea of rights, created a government limited to the protection of individual rights.

For centuries in Europe, the relationship between the people and the government had been that of serf to master: everyone was a servant of the ruling elite. In America, this was turned upside down: government became the servant of the individual. The very reason for a government–and its purpose–is to secure our inalienable, individual rights.

The results in America speak for themselves: the greatest most prosperous nation the world has ever seen. I here quote the writer Ayn Rand (and if you want to understand what is happening today, read her novel Atlas Shrugged). Ayn Rand, speaking to the graduating class at West Point, said that the United States was the first and only moral nation in the history of man, the first nation founded on a moral principle, the Rights of Man, and with a moral purpose, to secure these rights for all men.

This principle of rights is so strong that over years the Americans were able to correct the original shortcomings that the Founders could not overcome. Slavery and the denial of womens suffrage both fell when the principle of rights was properly applied to all men. To correct the original errors did not require the Americans to overthrow the principle, but rather to strengthen and to deepen it, to apply it to everyone, and to renew their commitment to it.

And that is what we must do today.

Because something very bad has happened in America over the last century. A cancer has implanted itself in the land of the free. A cancer has grown in our government and in our society. The cancer is the idea that government is no longer to be the defender of our rights, but rather the grantor of wishes.

Over the past century the idea took hold that governments purpose was not to secure our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but rather to satisfy our needs, whims and wants. That idea has been implanted in our schools, our media, and our government.

Do you wish for a better house? Theres a government housing agency to give it to you, with taxes extorted from those who buy their own house. Do you wish for health care? There is a government agency who will extort it from others and give it to you. Do you need food? There is a welfare agency to grab the wealth needed to give you food stamps.

And who will provide these handouts? The government, many people say, the all-powerful being that looms over us and grants our wishes. But who is to provide the goods that government hands out? Every person who works and produces, and whose property, gained by the sweat of his efforts, is taken from him by force.

The government has, once again, become a ruling aristocracy, set up as our masters, disposing of our lives.

This cancer has now grown to the point where this ruling elite controls a budget of over four thousand billion dollars a yearmore money than can be conceived by the human mind. The government had to grow this bigand it will continue to grow until it destroys this nationbecause it is acting according to the idea that it is morally right to take the wealth from those who produce it, and to give it to those who want it.

At the root of this idea is a view of man that is totally at odds with the vision of the Founders: the modern vision of man as a whining dependent, who begs for the needs of life from an all-powerful governing aristocracy. This ruling elite claims the moral right to distribute the wealth of those who earn it to those who wish for it.

If we are going to challenge this monstrosity, if we are going to expunge this cancer, then this is what we must reject. We need to regain the vision of ourselves held by the American Founders. We need to stand up, and assert ourselves as autonomous moral beings, with the right to our own life, liberty and the pursuit of our own happiness. We need to reject the claim that we are weak and dependent beggars, and to assert our own competence to run our own lives.

It is going to take as great a commitment to destroy this cancer as it took to build it. Were going to have to be strong, were going to have to be independent in our thinking, and we are going to have to reject handouts when they are offered to us. And were going to have to speak out.

At its heart, the economic and political crisis is a deeper problema moral problem. The cause of the crisis today is the worship of need, and the view of man as too stupid to act for his own sake, and worthy of being milked of all his values, to provide for others. This is what we must reject.

Do you think that this is a conspiracy to seize your wealth? It is far worse than that. As Ayn Rand wrote, It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.

This is an attempt to seize your life, to destroy your sense of self as an independent human being, and to replace it with a being with no self-esteem and no capacity for individual actiona being doomed to beg for sustenance from an all-powerful ruling elite.

This ruling elite, looking down on us right now, cannot understand gatherings such as these, in which free people gather to defend liberty. They think that this must be orchestrated by a vast conspiracy, because they cannot understand how autonomous human beings might gather by their own choice, to affirm their commitment to liberty.

Our so-called leaders think this because they dont see autonomous moral beings at all. They see only serfs, sniveling and whining, begging their masters for the scraps needed to survive, acting as a collective mob rather than as thinking individuals.

Look at yourselves again. Do you see in your face, and in the face of the person next to you, the slave of a group, with no moral status, no rights and no liberties, who is bound from birth to serve? Or do you see an autonomous being with the right to live for his own sake?

Will you knuckle under and become a helpless dependent? Or will you stand tall, and defend your right to your own life, your own liberty, your pursuit of your own individual happiness, and your own property?

It is time to stand up, to say no to the creed of dependence, to assert ourselves, to assert our own moral status, to defend our right to our own lives and property, and to make our voices heard.

Thank you very much.

John David Lewis

Leadership and Tea

Chris — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:11:37 +0000

I went to a Tea Party meeting yesterday to observe and chat with a few folks. I spoke with many people I did not know, and I ended up actually speaking to the whole crowd after prompted by many with whom I spoke to on the sidelines. I mainly talked with many folks from truck drivers, retired veterans, moms, small business owners and iterated about a familiar theme that is near and dear to me, small businesses and their impact on this great nation we live in. I have on many occasions proudly proclaimed that it will be entrepreneurial spirit, not government intrusion that will revive our economy. This folks is the heart of small businesses. Small business employs over 75 per cent of the United States workforce. Anything that harms them in my opinion, harms America.

I did not speak and simply say it was the current administration that overtaxed. I reminded them that it is the Washington politicians of both stripes that are reaching into our wallets. This has not been something that just happened. It has been incrementally occurring for over the last 95 years. It may be a battle between the parties, but for most of us it’s Government overreaching their bounds and getting involved in issues that are not ever discussed in the constitution and using that to fund their own constituencies for one reason or another. It is done by politicians to get re-elected and to have power. Ive seen right through this for many years. The second oldest profession is being a politician and I actually think there’s not much difference between the first and second.

Now there is a line between what constitutes being a leader and being a politician. A leader by definition has to serve their followers and constituencies. I suppose a politician can do that. But one thing that is sorely missed in all of this is what their motive is. If the motive of a leader or politician is to be in charge, make the organization or government run smoothly, make a profit, build a respected company or department, get elected, and to win that might sound good. But to truly define leadership we need to completely understand one thing, motive. How was it the person got into a position where they could be called a leader by the definition used above? Did they inherit it? Was it simply appointed to them? Was it funded by interest groups? If it wasnt earned on the merit of truly serving others then I would hesitate at calling them a leader and the definition of a leader is not who promised the most. If it was arrived by taking from someone and giving to another, it also is not leadership.

A leaders motivation is not how far they have advanced their position or power, but how far they have advanced others. Thats the bottom line. If a person takes away from someone intentionally, they are not a leader. A leader strives to add value to others. The value you add to others is teaching them skills, providing opportunity, giving them insight and perspective, and having faith in them. I know this may sound like a politician but the difference lies with their motivation. You can add value to others by not having to take resources from others to give them. A real leader provides inspiration, values, strength, solutions, character, and does not waver in them. There may be politicians whose motives are those of a true leader, but I find it rare to find one. Remember, a true leaders motivation is not to advance their own position or power, but to advance others.

Mr. Jefferson

Chris — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:32:45 +0000

“Micro-Stamping” Legislation Proposed in the Badger State!

Citizen Joe — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:04:04 +0000

Please Contact Your State Legislators Today!

State Senator Spencer Coggs (D-6) and State Representative Leon Young (D-16) have introduced a proposal that would ban the sale of all new semi-automatic pistols not equipped with so-called micro-stamping technology. While this proposal has not officially been introduced as a bill, supporters are trying to gather co-sponsors.

Micro-stamping is an unproven technology that would require unique identifying information from the firearm, including the make, model, and serial number, to be etched into the firing pin and breech face in such a manner that those identifiers are imprinted on the cartridge case upon firing. This technology can easily be defeated with common household tools, has no public safety value, and adds substantially to the cost of the firearm.

Under this proposal, it will become ILLEGAL to sell or transfer any new semi-automatic pistol that is not capable of micro-stamping a cartridge case upon firing.

Please contact your State Legislators TODAY and respectfully encourage them to not co-sponsor or support this anti-gun proposal. Please click here to find contact information.

Going Off the Rail on a Crazy Train

In the Know — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:07:07 +0000

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is psychiatrys “billing bible” of so-called mental disorders. With this, psychiatrists can label anyone as mentally ill. Shynessa common life situationis now categorized as “Social Anxiety Disorder” (SAD). No matter how huge the psychiatric drugging industry grows, psychiatrists are hard at work inventing new disorders to make it even larger.

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is psychiatry’s billing bible of so-called mental disorders. With the DSM, psychiatry has taken countless aspects of human behavior and reclassified them as a mental illness simply by adding the term disorder onto them. While even key DSM contributors admit that there is no scientific/medical validity to the disorders, the DSM nonetheless serves as a diagnostic tool, not only for individual treatment, but also for child custody disputes, discrimination cases, court testimony, education and more. As the diagnoses completely lack scientific criteria, anyone can be labeled mentally ill, and subject to dangerous and life-threatening treatments based solely on opinion.

While psychiatrists have managed for years to make it look, feel, and sound convincingly scientific, their diagnoses are being seen for the dangerous frauds that they really are. Far more than just marketing tools or harmless billing codes for treatment, in the hands of psychiatrists these manuals can literally be used to decide the fate of any individual.

Psychiatry: Mental Illness

Psychiatrists charge huge sums of money to insurance companies, governments and anyone else who will pay to “treat” made-up mental disorders. Watch the hidden-camera footage of psychiatrists in action in the video DSM: Inventing Disorders

No Science To DSM

Few patients labeled with a mental disorder are aware that no scientific or medical test can substantiate any psychiatric diagnosis. Once labeled, a person can be stigmatized for life.

Arrived at by what psychiatrists call “consensus,” which in reality is no more scientific or sophisticated than a vote of insider hands, the DSM-IV contains a record 374 so-called mental disorders.

Perhaps the best example of psychiatry’s scientific pretension in creating and augmenting the DSM is the manner in which new “illnesses” are added to it. Psychiatrists literally vote on what constitutes a mental illness or disorder by raising their hands at a conference. There is no medical evidence presented, no brain scans, blood tests or any other medical criteria needed to establish a disorder in the DSM; it is 100% subjective.

A psychologist attending a DSM hearing noted, “The low level of intellectual effort was shocking. Diagnoses were developed by majority vote on the level we would use to choose a restaurant. You feel like Italian, I feel like Chinese, so lets go to the cafeteria. Then its typed into a computer.”

In the absence of objective, scientific evidence, psychiatry has decreed the following to be mental illnesses:

Phonological Disorder [speech sounds and pronunciation]
Caffeine Related Disorder
Conduct Disorder
Mathematics Disorder
Nicotine Use or Withdrawal Disorder
Non Compliance With Treatment Disorder
Separation Anxiety Disorder
Sibling Rivalry Disorder
Phase of life problem
Sexual abuse of a child problem

And the all-encompassing “unspecified mental disorder”.

Experts Debunk DSM

While medicine’s scientific credentials are undisputed, psychiatry’s lack of any systematic approach to mental health has contributed greatly to its poor reputation, both among professions and the population as a whole. Medical experts explain why DSM is unscientific and, therefore, unreliable.

The scientific validity of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has come under increasing attack from medical professionals and scientific experts such as Herb Kutchins of California State University and Stuart A. Kirk of UCLA, who found: “there is ample reason to conclude that the latest versions of DSM as a clinical tool are unreliable and therefore of questionable validity as a classification system.”

Often tagged “junk science,” according to an international poll of mental health experts conducted in England, the DSM-IV was voted one of the ten worst psychiatric papers of the millennium.

Psychiatry fails the test of a true science. In fact, the lack of science behind the DSM gives a clear idea of why it has earned such critics as the following small sample.

The late Loren Mosher, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry: “DSM-IV is the fabrication upon which psychiatry seeks acceptance by medicine in general. Insiders know it is more a political than scientific document DSM-IV has become a bible and a money making bestsellerits major failings notwithstanding. It confines and defines practice, some take it seriously, others more realistically.” And, “It is the way to get paid. Diagnostic reliability is easy to attain for research projects. The issue is what do the categories tell us? Do they in fact accurately represent the person with a problem? They dont, and cant, because there are no external validating criteria for psychiatric diagnoses. There is neither a blood test nor specific anatomic lesions for any major psychiatric disorder.”

Margaret Hagen Ph.D, author of Whores Of The Court, dismisses the DSM: “Given their farcical ‘empirical’ procedures for arriving at new disorders with their associated symptoms lists, where does the American Psychiatric Association get off claiming a scientific, research-based foundation for its diagnostic manual? This is nothing more than science by decree. They say it is science, so it is.”

Dr. Thomas Dorman, internist and member of the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom: “In short, the whole business of creating psychiatric categories of ‘disease’, formalizing them with consensus, and subsequently ascribing diagnostic codes to them, which in turn leads to their use for insurance billing, is nothing but an extended racket furnishing psychiatry a pseudo-scientific aura. The perpetrators are, of course, feeding at the public trough.”

Jeffrey A. Schaler, Ph.D.: “The notion of scientific validity, though not an act, is related to fraud. Validity refers to the extent to which something represents or measures what it purports to represent or measure. When diagnostic measures do not represent what they purport to represent, we say that the measures lack validity. If a business transaction or trade rested on such a lack of validity, we might say that the lack of validity was instrumental in a commitment of fraud. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) published by the American Psychiatric Association and used by licensed psychotherapists throughout the country is notorious for low scientific validity. Yet it is instrumental in securing insurance reimbursement for psychotherapy services”

Professor Edward Shorter, author of A History of Psychiatry: “Rather than heading off into the brave new world of science, DSM-IV-style psychiatry seemed in some ways to be heading out into the desert.”

Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus wrote: “The ostensible validity of DSM is reinforced by psychiatrys claim that mental illnesses are brain diseasesa claim supposedly based on recent discoveries in brain imaging techniques and pharmacological agents for treatment. This is not true.” Further, “There is no blood or other biological test to ascertain the presence of a mental illness, as there is for most bodily diseases. If such a test were developed, then the condition would cease to be a mental illness and would be classified, instead, as a symptom of a bodily disease.”

The late Dr. Sydney Walker, III, psychiatrist, neurologist: “The DSM has led to the unnecessary drugging of millions of American children who could be diagnosed, treated, and cured without the use of toxic and potentially lethal medications.”

Dr. Harold Pincus, Vice Chairman of the DSM-IV task force admitted, “There has never been any criterion that psychiatric diagnoses require a demonstrated biological etiology (cause).”

Paul R. McHugh, Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and psychiatrist-in-chief at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore: “In the absence of validating conceptions like the six mechanisms of disease in internal medicine, American psychiatry has turned to ‘committees of experts’ to define mental disorder. Membership on such committees is a matter of one’s reputation in the APAwhich means that those chosen can confidently be expected to manifest not only a requisite degree of psychiatric competence but, perhaps more crucially, some talent for diplomacy and self-promotion. The new DSM approach of using experts and descriptive criteria in identifying psychiatric diseases has encouraged a productive industry. If you can describe it, you can name it; and if you can name it, then you can claim it exists as a distinct ‘entity’ with, eventually, a direct treatment tied to it. Proposals for new psychiatric disorders have multiplied so feverishly that the DSM itself has grown from a mere 119 pages in 1968 to 886 in the latest edition; a new and enlarged edition, DSM-V, is already in the planning stages. Embedded within these hundreds of pages are some categories that are dubious, in the sense that they are more like the normal responses of sensitive people than psychiatric ‘entities’; and some that are purely the inventions of their proponents.”

Psychiatrist Matthew Dumont: “The humility and the arrogance in the prose are almost indistinguishable, frolicking like puppies at play. They say: ‘while this manual provides a classification of mental disorder…no definition adequately specifies precise boundaries for the concept’[APA, 1987] They go on to say: ‘there is no assumption that each mental disorder is a discrete entity with sharp boundaries between it and other mental disorders or between it and no mental disorder’ [APA, 1987].”

Psychologist Renee Garfinkel, a staff member of the American Psychological Association, said of the DSM-III-R work group: “The low level of intellectual effort was shocking. Diagnoses were developed by majority vote on the level we would use to choose a restaurant. You feel like Italian, I feel like Chinese, so lets go to a cafeteria. Then its typed into the computer.”

David Healy, psychiatrist, director of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine and author of The Anti-Depressant Era: “There must inevitably be a struggle, or a dialectical process, to determine the meaning of physical symptoms and where the boundaries of health and disease lie.”

J. Allan Hobson and Jonathan A. Leonard, authors of Out of Its Mind, Psychiatry in Crisis, A Call For Reform: “DSM-IVs authoritative status and detailed nature tends to promote the idea that rote diagnosis and pill-pushing are acceptable.”

Elliot S. Valenstein, biopsychologist, author of Blaming the Brain: “DSM-IV is not an exciting document. It is purely descriptive and presents no new scientific insights or any theories about what causes the many mental disorders it lists.”

Lawrence Diller, M.D., author of Running on Ritalin: “The search for a biological marker is doomed from the outset because of the contradictions and ambiguities of the diagnostic construct of ADHD as defined by the DSM. I liken the efforts to discover a marker to the search for the Holy Grail.”

Summing this up, Herb Kutchins of California State University, Sacramento, and Stuart A. Kirk of the University of California, Los Angeles, authors of Making Us Crazy: The Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders state this:

“The developers of DSM assume that if a group of psychiatrists agree on a list of atypical ‘new’ behaviors, the behaviors constitute a valid mental disorder. Using this approach, creating mental disorders can become a parlor game in which clusters of all kinds of behaviors (i.e. syndromes) can be added to the manual.”

“There is ample reason to conclude that the latest versions of DSM as a clinical tool are unreliable and therefore of questionable validity as a classification system.”

“There are indeed many illusions about DSM and very strong needs among its developers to believe that their dreams of scientific excellence and utility have come true. The ‘bitter medicine’ is that DSM has unsuccessfully attempted to medicalize too many human troubles.”

The “Chemical Imbalance” Hoax to Push Drugs

Psychiatrists would have you believe that a brain-based, chemical imbalance underlies mental disease. While popularized by heavy public marketing, it is simply and utterly false. All of psychiatrys disease models, have been thoroughly discredited by medical doctors and scientists, and this is one of them.

From cradle to the grave, we are bombarded with information pushing us towards a chemical “fix.” But take a closer look at this psychoactive, drug-centered philosophy.

Psychiatrists claim that a person “needs” a drug to combat his or her “chemical imbalance” in the brain that is causing “mental disorder.” However, the concept that a brain-based, chemical imbalance underlies mental illness is false. As with all of psychiatry’s disease models, it has been thoroughly discredited by researchers.

Diabetes is a biochemical imbalance. However, as Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Glenmullen states, “The definitive test and biochemical imbalance is a high blood sugar balance level. Treatment in severe cases is insulin injections, which restore sugar balance. The symptoms clear and retest shows the blood sugar is normal. Nothing like a sodium imbalance or blood sugar imbalance exists for depression or any other psychiatric syndrome.”

Psychiatrist David Kaiser said, “modern psychiatry has yet to convincingly prove the genetic/biologic cause of any single mental illness Patients have been diagnosed with ‘chemical imbalances’ despite the fact that no test exists to support such a claim, and there is no real conception of what a correct chemical balance would look like.”

Today’s brain imagery photos, said to prove mental illnesses are physical diseases, are also deeply flawed. Indeed, prescribed psychotropic drugs most likely cause any changes seen in the brain. Steven Hyman, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, admitted that indiscriminate use of such brain scans produce “pretty but inconsequential pictures of the brain.”

Elliot Valenstein, Ph.D., author of Blaming the Brain, is unequivocal: “There are no tests available for assessing the chemical status of a living person’s brain.” No “biochemical, anatomical, or functional signs have been found that reliably distinguish the brains of mental patients.”

According to Valenstein, “The theories are held on to not only because there is nothing else to take their place, but also because they are useful in promoting drug treatment.”

Publications and Information

For more information about how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the foundation of fraudulent billing practices and deprivation of rights, read CCHRs reports and publications. The DSM is behind the mass drugging of children and has usurped medicine, our courts and social agencies.

The Brown Shirts are Coming!

Citizen Joe — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:38:04 +0000

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a plan to set up a new “volunteer corps” and consider whether “a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people” should be developed.

The legislation also refers to “uniforms” that would be worn by the “volunteers” and the “need” for a “public service academy, a 4-year institution” to “focus on training” future “public sector leaders.” The training, apparently, would occur at “campuses.”

Link to the full story here.

Safety and Security are now at your Fingertips!

Citizen Joe — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:40:13 +0000

On the BorderLine » Individualism

Individual Rights Again At Risk In Colorado (and it may be coming to your state soon).

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