Sunday, July 19, 2015

Soviet style medicalization of dissent

Mark Steyn writes,
If I were looking at it objectively, the week after Mann filed suit I would have emptied my bank account, driven across the border and got on with my life somewhere else. But I've never ducked a free-speech fight, and here I will make my stand. Had I been in the situation of Dinesh D'Souza, however, I think I would definitely have scrammed. He was the target of a politically motivated prosecution and, bearing in mind that process-is-the-punishment shtick, he knew he couldn't win, so he cut a deal. Under the appalling hacks who pass for jurists in this system, D'Souza is now discovering that, when you cut a deal with the feds, the terms have a way of subtly evolving. For example, a man called Richard M Berman, who purports to be a US district judge, has just ordered D'Souza to undergo psychological counseling.

I should say, as I always do, that I have no use for Dinesh D'Souza. Nevertheless, he is the victim here of an abusive prosecutocracy and an out-of-control judge who disgraces his office:

The psychiatrists D'Souza was first ordered to see found no signs of depression, but U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman overruled their findings and ordered D'Souza see a new psychological counselor weekly.

The guy who needs psychological counseling here is Richard M Berman. It is a common tool of totalitarian societies to classify any opposition as mental illness. You don't have to like D'Souza to be utterly revolted when a thug operator posing as a judge starts using the medicalization of dissent with the enthusiasm of any old Soviet commissar.

D'Souza is in the horrible situation of having to weigh objecting to Berman against his urge to see family back in India and being denied freedom to travel - all for a campaign finance offense that is a barely discernible fraction next to what the Clinton Foundation, Lois Lerner's IRS and Obama's tax-exempt brother are pulling every hour of the day. The fact that d'Souza's freedom to see his family is even at issue testifies to what a vile system federal "justice" is.

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