Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine (1961 LP)
1960s
Context: But at the moment I'd like to talk about another way because this threat is with us and at the moment is more imminent. One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project.... Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it. We have an example of this. Under the Truman administration it was proposed that we have a compulsory health insurance program for all people in the United States, and, of course, the American people unhesitatingly rejected this.
“By pretending that convention is Nature, that disobeying a personal prohibition is a medical illness, they establish themselves as agents of social control and at the same time disguise their punitive interventions in the semantic and social trappings of medical practice.”
Source: The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997), p. 167.
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Thomas Szasz 70
Hungarian psychiatrist 1920–2012Related quotes
Source: Monica Troughton Magical menopause: Relief and remedies for the symptoms of menopause http://books.google.co.in/books?id=wu84AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA89, Infinite Ideas, 24 January 2007, p. 89
Man kann nicht elektrisches Licht und Radioapparat benutzen, in Krankheitsfällen moderne medizinische und klinische Mittel in Anspruch nehmen und gleichzeitig an die Geister-und Wunderwelt des Neuen Testaments glauben.
Source: New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941), p. 4
Conclusions.
The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (1961)
Section 3 : Work Democracy versus Politics. The Natural Social Forces for the Mastery of the Emotional Plague
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 10 : Work Democracy
Context: It is an essential part of our social tragedy that people, like farmers, the industrial workers, the medical profession, etc., influence the social process not only by their work, but also — and even predominantly — by political ideologies. For political activity hampers objective, rational activity; it splits professional organizations into warring ideological groups; it disorganizes the industrial workers: it restricts the work of the physician and harms the patients, etc. In brief, political activity prevents precisely what it pretends to achieve: peace, work, security, international cooperation, objective expression of opinion, freedom of belief, etc.
Source: The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America Before Federal Regulation (1961), p. vii
Source: The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997), pp. 170-171.