Maggie's Farm

Source says:

"The strict Thomas Szasz Libertarian approach is simply to treat the mentally ill the same way we would treat normal people. The problem is, that does not happen. We can't treat them like everyone else because they aren't like everyone else. If I went into a store and punched out a clerk, I'd be charged with assault and battery, I'd show up in court to face charges, and if convicted I would get probation or prison. On a fourth offense, I would most likely be sent up for a period of time. The problem with mentally ill people is they don't show up for court dates, judges don't want to send them to prison because they don't belong there and will be victimized, and everything just gets deferred until they really do something bad. (Like, saw open someone's chest.) And so, while I would agree that it's inhumane to send someone like that to prison, where should they go? It's completely dysfunctional to just pretend they're normal. (Just a regular old customer with body odor who lost his temper....) Same thing with the term "homeless" -- the implication being they're just like the rest of us only they lack housing."

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But we could "treat the mentally ill the same way we would treat normal people". How? Kick them out of stores: the proprietors have a right to their property and to sequester it from very, very, very smelly people!

If they go into a store and punch out a clerk, they should be charged with assault and battery and put in jail.

If they don't show up for court dates, judges should send them to prison because they do belong there.

Then we can send Christian missions to prisons and help them there, after they have been deloused and bathed.

Szasz is right. We have the right to avoid these guys in private settings. (And in public ones where we are prevented from use of these facilities by smells.) They - the smelly - have the right to the limited detentions that prison sentences enforce instead of the unlimited caging that "mental health" incarceration entails.

Spare us the foolishness about their victimization in prisons. Lift up the curtain on victimization in "mental heath" facilities.

Szasz is right. Mental illness is a vapid and harmful analogy. Their is nothing organically wrong with the brains of most of these folks. To refuse to hold all, including the very smelly, subject to the impartial rules of justice is injustice. To us and ultimately to them.