The reflexive call for fewer liberties

Glenn Greenwald
Jan. 13, 2011

William Galston -- former Clinton adviser and current Brookings Institution Senior Fellow -- has a column in T he New Republic about the Gabrielle Giffords shooting that illustrates the mentality endlessly eroding basic American liberty: namely, the belief that every tragedy must lead to new government powers and new restrictions on core liberties.  The lesson of the Arizona tragedy, he argues, is that it's too difficult to force citizens into mental institutions against their will. This, he says, is the fault of "civil libertarians," who began working in the 1970s on legal reforms to require a higher burden of proof for involuntary commitment (generally: it must be proven that the person is a danger to himself or to others). As a result, Galston wants strict new laws imposing a litany of legal obligations on the mentally ill, their friends and family, and even acquaintances, as well as dramatically expanded powers to lock away those with mental illness (with broader definitions of what that means).

Listen to what he proposes:  "first, those who acquire credible evidence of an individual’s mental disturbance should be required to report it to both law enforcement authorities and the courts, and the legal jeopardy for failing to do so should be tough enough to ensure compliance"; those reporting obligations should apply not only to family and friends, but extend to "school authorities and other involved parties." And "second, the law should no longer require, as a condition of involuntary incarceration, that seriously disturbed individuals constitute a danger to themselves or others"; instead, involuntary commitment should be imposed whenever there is "delusional loss of contact with reality."  He concludes on this melodramatic note:  'How many more mass murders and assassinations do we need before we understand that the rights-based hyper-individualism of our laws governing mental illness is endangering the security of our community and the functioning of our democracy?"

There's so much warped reasoning embedded in this argument that it's hard to know where to begin. Galston seems to be unaware of this, but what motivated the reforms in this area were the decades of severe, horrifying abuses which those with mental illnesses -- and even those who had none -- suffered as a result of permissive involuntary commitment standards and prolonged forced incarceration.  Those who suffered mental illnesses were locked away for years and sometimes decades despite having done nothing wrong and despite not being a threat to anyone, while countless people who simply exhibited strange or out-of-the-ordinary behavior were deemed mentally ill and similarly consigned. The psychitaric social worker Alicia Curtis provided just one example:  "There is also a large history of the forced treatment of homosexuality as mental 'illness'."  Indeed, involuntarily committing people in mental hospitals is a time-honored way for stifling any individuality and dissent; see this 2010 New York Times article on how China uses that repressive tactic.

...Continued