A Brief History Of Mental Health

Jonathan Kellerman, professor of psychology and best-selling author, provides a short history of mental health in the United States since the 1970s. In a nutshell, excuse the expression, it boils down to one thing: turn 'em loose on the streets. The rest, as they say, is history.

By the time I received my doctorate in 1974, the doors to many of the locked wards had been flung open and the much vaunted community mental health centers were being built–predominately in low-rent neighborhoods. A few years later, government funding for these allegedly humane treatment outposts had been cut, as yet more fiscal belt-tightening was inspired by findings that they didn't work.

Because crazy people rarely showed up for treatment voluntarily, and when they did, the treatment milieu consisted of queuing up interminably at Thorazine Kiosks.

And now we had a Homeless Problem.

And everyone was astonished.

Estimates vary but there's no doubt that a significant percentage of people living on heating vents, pushing their belongings in shopping carts, squatting in city parks and immersed in the squalor of tent cities suffer from severe mental disease. And their psychosis is often exacerbated by drug and alcohol abuse–what is, essentially, a regimen of self-medication that should make a Szaszian proud.

Many of these unfortunates end up as victims of violent crimes. A few become victimizers and when they do, watch out. For though it is true that schizophrenics are responsible for a proportionally lower rate of violent offenses than the general population (because many forms of the disease engender passivity and physical inactivity), when crazy people do act out the results are often horrific: bloody spree killings ignited by paranoid thinking and the angry urgings of internal voices.

Which brings us to outrages such as the Virginia Tech massacre.

Diagnosis from afar is the purview of talk-shows hosts and other charlatans, and I will not attempt to detail the psyche of the Virginia Tech slaughterer. But I will hazard that much of what has been reported about his pre-massacre behavior–prolonged periods of asocial mutism and withdrawal, irrational anger and hatred, bizarre writing and speech–is not at odds with the picture of a fulminating, serious mental disease. And his age falls squarely within the most common period when psychosis blossoms.

No one who knew him seems surprised by what he did. On the contrary, dorm chatter characterized him explicitly as a future school-shooter. One of his professors, the poet Nikki Giovanni, saw him as a disruptive bully and kicked him out of her class. Other teachers viewed him as disturbed and referred him for the ubiquitous "counseling"–an outcome that is ambiguous to the point of meaninglessness and akin to "treatment" for a patient with metastasized cancer.

But even that minimal care wasn't given. The shooter didn't want it and no one tried to force him to get it. While it's been reported that he was involuntarily committed to a "Behavioral Health Center" in December 2005, those reports also say he was released the very next morning. Even if the will to segregate an obvious menace had been in place, the legal mechanisms to provide even temporary "warehousing" were absent. The rest is terrible history.

That is not to say that anyone who pens violence-laden poetry or lets slip the occasional hostile remark should be protectively incarcerated. But when the level of threat rises to college freshmen and faculty prophesying accurately, perhaps we should err on the side of public safety rather than protect individual liberty at all costs.

Kellerman explains how much of this came about, why it became all the rage to "liberate" the mentally ill. It is worth taking the time to read. From personal experience in a related topic, I can attest that opening the doors to the state hospitals was a questionable idea at best. I have a brother who has Downs Syndrome. He was at a state hospital in New York for many years after several instances where my mother realized she could not control his violent outbursts. He did quite well at the hospital and regarded it as his home. When they started closing the hospitals, they sent him to a group home. A series of them, in fact. Because he has had repeated problems in those settings through the years and ends up getting transferred. Is he better off? I don't know that he is, really. 

A Modest Proposal

Hat tip to LGF for this item. The Pittsburgh Review-Tribune carried this story about a lecture by Ayaan Hirsi Ali in which a local Pittsburgh imam cheerfully announced that Hirsi Ali should be put to death for her comments.

A community debate over religious freedom surfaced in Western Pennsylvania last week when Dutch feminist author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee who has lived under the threat of death for denouncing her Muslim upbringing, made an appearance at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown.

Islamic leaders tried to block the lecture, which was sponsored through an endowment from the Frank J. and Sylvia T. Pasquerilla Lecture Series. They argued that Hirsi Ali's attacks against the Muslim faith in her book, "Infidel," and movie, "Submission," are "poisonous and unjustified" and create dissension in their community.

Although university officials listened to Islamic leaders' concerns, the lecture planned last year took place Tuesday evening under tight security, with no incidents.

Imam Fouad ElBayly, president of the Johnstown Islamic Center, was among those who objected to Hirsi Ali's appearance.

"She has been identified as one who has defamed the faith. If you come into the faith, you must abide by the laws, and when you decide to defame it deliberately, the sentence is death," said ElBayly, who came to the U.S. from Egypt in 1976.

This is not a religious debate. This is a threat. This man, who has come to this country and taken advantage of the religious freedom it mandates, wants to deny it to another. He also wants the person he disagrees with dead. I have a modest proposal. Eject this man from this country - at once. This is not freedom of speech - this is incitement to violence. And this is someone we do not need in this country. I happen to have been raised in the Lutheran faith. And I would be saying exactly the same thing about a Lutheran minister who called for the death of someone who decided to change faiths - or abandon the Lutheran faith altogether. Freedom of religion means just that.

Where Are The Grown-Ups?

I missed this yesterday. Peggy Noonan hits one right out of the park with her weekly column in the Opinion Journal. She is writing about the Virginia Tech tragedy and wonders where the grown-ups were. She also wonders what is happening to America.

There seems to me a sort of broad national diminution of common sense in our country that we don't notice in the day-to-day but that become obvious after a story like this. Common sense says a person like Cho Seung-hui, who was obviously dangerous and unstable, should have been separated from the college population. Common sense says someone should have stepped in like an adult, like a person in authority, and taken him away. It is only common sense that if a person like Cho leaves a self-aggrandizing, self-celebrating, self-pitying video diary of himself to be played by the mass media, the mass media should not play it and not publicize it, not make it famous. Common sense says that won't help.

And all those big cops, scores of them, hundreds, with the latest, heaviest, most sophisticated gear, all the weapons and helmets and safety vests and belts. It looked like the brute force of the state coming up against uncontrollable human will.

But it also looked muscle bound. And the schools themselves more and more look muscle bound, weighed down with laws and legal assumptions and strange prohibitions.

The school officials I saw, especially the head of the campus psychological services, seemed to me endearing losers. But endearing is too strong. I mean "not obviously and vividly offensive." The school officials who gave all the highly competent, almost smooth and practiced news conferences seemed to me like white, bearded people who were educated in softness. Cho was "troubled"; he clearly had "issues"; it would have been good if someone had "reached out"; it's too bad America doesn't have better "support services." They don't use direct, clear words, because if they're blunt, they're implicated.

The literally white-bearded academic who was head of the campus counseling center was on Paula Zahn Wednesday night suggesting the utter incompetence of officials to stop a man who had stalked two women, set a fire in his room, written morbid and violent plays and poems, been expelled from one class, and been declared by a judge to be "mentally ill" was due to the lack of a government "safety net." In a news conference, he decried inadequate "funding for mental health services in the United States." Way to take responsibility. Way to show the kids how to dodge.

The anxiety of our politicians that there may be an issue that goes unexploited was almost–almost–comic. They mean to seem sensitive, and yet wind up only stroking their supporters. I believe Rep. Jim Moran was first out of the gate with the charge that what Cho did was President Bush's fault. I believe Sen. Barack Obama was second, equating the literal killing of humans with verbal coarseness. Wednesday there was Sen. Barbara Boxer equating the violence of the shootings with the "global warming challenge" and "today's Supreme Court decision" upholding a ban on partial-birth abortion.

One watches all of this and wonders: Where are the grown-ups?

Noonan sees a coldness creeping into American society. A ducking of any real responsibility. All the warning signs were there that Cho was extremely dangerous to himself and to others. But nobody stepped up and got him away from people. The people who should have gotten him off that campus let everyone down. The adults in charge were no more than children. They bemoan the government not taking action; not being there to stop it. No "safety net" to make the decisions for them - because they want someone to make those decisions, just not them.

They could have averted it. They were supposed to be the grown-ups in charge. Instead they shuffled the problem of a violent, unstable person from one decision maker to another. But no decisions were made, other than to avoid making the decisions. When NBC received Cho's package, no grown-up stepped in to say, "We are not going to air this and we will not share it with anyone other than the police." Instead, they plastered the ravings of a madman all over the television. To further numb people. To increase the building coldness in American society. To increase the likelihood of a copycat seeking his 15 minutes of fame, purchased with the blood of other people. The people who should be the grown-ups in charge sanctimoniously declare the campus a "gun-free zone". Which assures a disarmed and vulnerable group of targets for someone to purchase his fame with.

Where are the grown-ups?

The Rites (And Wrongs) Of Spring

It is currently storming again here where I live, for the third day in a row. This one roaring overhead right now is a bad one. There is hail as well as torrential rain. These storms appear to be coming in from the Southeast, a fairly unusual direction in these parts. Cars driving down the rain-swept streets have their lights on and are creeping along,  wipers running at full speed, but unable to keep the windows clear.

Midwestern springs can be interesting. I have not heard any reports of tornadoes in the area and the town sirens did not sound when the latest storm was beating against the windows. But the building shook several times as fists of wind pummeled the old structure. Almost as quickly as it appeared, the storm is already over, past us and beating up on the next town. Such is the weather at this time of the year. It changes so fast, it's hard to figure out what to wear.

I stepped outside to survey the damage just now. The wind, blowing hard from the South, is quite cold. The flowers out front look a little forlorn and drooping, but they are still there. The tree on the South edge of the property has lost a lot of it's spring "flowers" - just messy things that accumulate in drifts like dark brown snow around this time of year. I don't think we are quite finished for today, though. It is brightening outside, but the sky to the South appears to have bands of clouds - rather ominous ones - heading this way quickly, driven by that cold wind.

Sometimes, I wish I lived somewhere with climate instead of weather. But I'd miss the storms, I think.

Default Assumption

Michael Barone examines the "blame America first" crowd and how they got that way. His conclusion is probably familiar to all conservatives or those who lean somewhat to the right: institutional radicals in academia are the primary carriers of the disease (as it were).

"They always blame America first." That was Jeane Kirkpatrick, describing the "San Francisco Democrats" in 1984. But it could be said about a lot of Americans, especially highly educated Americans, today.

In their assessment of what is going on in the world, they seem to start off with a default assumption that we are in the wrong. The "we" can take different forms: the United States government, the vast mass of middle-class Americans, white people, affluent people, churchgoing people or the advanced English-speaking countries. Such people are seen as privileged and selfish, greedy and bigoted, rash and violent. If something bad happens, the default assumption is that it's their fault. They always blame America — or the parts of America they don't like — first.

Where does this default assumption come from? And why is it so prevalent among our affluent educated class (which, after all, would seem to overlap considerably with the people being complained about?). It comes, I think, from our schools and, especially, from our colleges and universities. The first are staffed by liberals long accustomed to see America as full of problems needing solving; the latter have been packed full of the people cultural critic Roger Kimball calls "tenured radicals," people who see this country and its people as the source of all evil in the world.

It comes down to a fundamentally flawed take on history and America's place in it. Barone is not arguing that the US is perfect. But for all its flaws, the US has done far more good in the world than the blame America crowd will ever admit. Barone calls this "America = bad" a default assumption that far too many people have programmed into them in schools. And that is sad.

Fallout

Self-professed enemies of the United States, who call routinely for the downfall of this nation, watch our internal politics and gloat. The theatrical, empty, spineless maneuvering and posturing for political advantage plays out not just at home anymore, but on the world stage even more than it used to. In the age of the internet and satellite news, everything that transpires in Washington is seen, in real time, all over the world.

They watch, they goad at the weak points and they wait. But they are very encouraged by what they see playing out right now. There was a time, in living memory, when internal politics stopped - like a thrown switch - at the water's edge. No more. Now American Senators will cheerfully shake hands with, and sign autographs for, enemies of this country who represent governments with official positions calling for the downfall of the nation. Now the criticism of a wartime president, rather than diminishing after the elections has increased and grown increasingly shrill.

There is no talking to the extremes on this issue. There is less and less common ground, less tolerance for opposing views. The left is increasingly strident in its demands that dissenting (read non-leftist) voices be silenced. This despite their incessant, televised whining and wailing about how they feel that they are being silenced. They charge, in a ravening pack, after Representative Ellen Tauscher because she is not far enough to the left. This is, of course, the exact same viciousness that they unleashed on Joe Lieberman. Both of these people are extremely reliable Democrats. But just not far enough to the left for the Koz Kidz, therefore, to the true believers, they need to be destroyed.

And those who hate this country and all it stands for are cheering in the wings. And working hard to get nuclear weapons while our foolish posturing continues apace. Iran is, again, urinating on the UN and increasing its nuclear program. The hallowed UN, that beloved icon of the left. Yet the left pays no mind at all. They turn a blind eye to the Mullahs, disregard their open, naked threats to wipe an ally of the US off the map and in general play the game for those who hate us.

Are there Democrats who do not believe in the leftwing agenda? Sure. But they are increasingly being backed into a corner by the pack they have allied themselves with. The party is being cowed by the shrill screeching from the folks like Kos who unleash their believers on those who don't toe the line, then brag in the national press about how they made someone knuckle under (as Kos did). The Democrats are letting a man who only escaped criminal charges because he held out for more cash later dictate a stunningly stupid policy that will come back to pay dividends on the next Democratic party president who needs to use force in the world.

I have been saying, for as long as I have been writing this blog, that the world is getting closer to a general war because of the failure to face down the ones who are really trying to bring that war about. But the US - and the administration in particular - are easier targets than the real problem regimes. And pretty soon the fallout of al this will come to pass.

And it will be fallout.

Conflation

Jason Steck has an interesting explanation of the use of conflation to skew arguments. He notices the suddenly escalating hysteria over claims that the Bush administration is "planning to attack" Iran despite the fact that the administration is also, quite publicly, stating rather firmly that they have no "intention" of doing so. Steck points out, quite correctly, that the two terms, which are inherently completely different, are being conflated by anti-war people and the media. There is no equivalency in the terms yet they are routinely interchanged in an attempt to demonize.

What all the breathless reports lack, however, is a sober reading of the strategic situation untainted by assumptions about shadowy “neocons” plotting in a dark situation room aboard the Death Star. The Guardian piece makes its error most glaringly:

Robert Gates, the new US defence secretary, said yesterday: “I don’t know how many times the president, secretary [of state Condoleezza] Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran.”

But Vincent Cannistraro, a Washington-based intelligence analyst, shared the sources’ assessment that Pentagon planning was well under way. “Planning is going on, in spite of public disavowals by Gates. Targets have been selected. For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place.”

He added: “We are planning for war. It is incredibly dangerous.”

Note the conflation between “planning” and “intentions”. SECDEF Gates states that the U.S. has no intention to attack and the Guardian responds by quoting an analyst who cites advanced planning.

But planning for an eventuality of military action does not telegraph an actual intention to attack. Conflation between the two is ignorant of analytical distinctions as well as historical facts. Analytically, planning merely opens up the option for an action, it does not mandate that the plans be put into action. Historically, the world is rife with examples of plans that remained on the shelf, up to an including U.S., Soviet, and British planning efforts for nuclear war. Did the existence of the U.S. SIOP indicate an actual intention to carry it out? Of course not. In fact, the existence of the plan was intended specifically to prevent having to use it.

Any government that was not "planning" for the eventuality of having to fight an opponent, even if they have no desire or intention to do so, is asking for serious trouble. I realize there are some people that think all war is wrong every time, no matter what (The Society of Friends is a good example). Some - but not by any means all - of the "anti-war" voices are of this opinion. Others who vehemently oppose the Iraq war are openly calling for armed intervention in Darfur. They are not so much anti-war as they are anti-this-war.

But there is a very, very disturbing trend at work here. The conflation of unlike terms is consistently being used to demonize people with differing opinions. There are moves afoot to equate people who disagree with the "consensus" on global warming to call them "deniers" - an attempt to conflate their opposing views with Holocaust deniers who try to argue that historical, documented events did not occur. There is a world of difference between denying history and disagreeing with a certain, unknowable, future outcome. Yet there are many doing just that. One site has a "Deniers Database" running. Nice. Pogroms at eleven, presumably.

I routinely get screeching commenters calling me a religiously motivated, rightwingnut, neocon, jack-booted Bushbot, or words to that effect. I have a number of banned commenters for just that reason. I'm sure I'll have more in the future. (And around here, banned means the spam filters kill your comments and they never get read by anyone. I love those plugins.) But the conflation of all the terms and the projection of the commenters own perceptions is discouraging. There is only the desire to demonize, denigrate and shout down.

Steck concludes his post thusly:

I would agree with critics who say that now is a bad time for the U.S. to attack Iran. U.S. forces are stretched trying to deal with the situation in Iraq and U.S. diplomatic credibility around the world is at low ebb. Other options remain viable and the Bush administration appears to be pursuing those alternatives in both word and deed. Their creation of a “credible threat” of military action should not be automatically read as a sign that Darth Cheney is off his leash. Media analysts of Bush administration foreign policy should take a deep breath and examine the role that their own assumptions might be playing in skewing the public debate.

I cannot improve on that. It's perfect as written.

New York City Stinks

Well, at least people over a wide area are saying they smell gas.

"The smell is there. We don't know the source of it," said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in his daily news conference.

But Bloomberg said the levels of natural gas around the city were not dangerous, according to sensors.

The Port Authority said it believes the gas leak is coming from Bleecker Street.

Law enforcement sources told WNBC.com that this does not appear to be an act of terror.

"It is still early but there is no indication of terrorism and there is no credible intelligence to suggest any imminent threat to the homeland or to New York at this time," said Russ Knocke, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.

He said the agency is closely monitoring the situation and talking with the local authorities, who are the lead in the matter.

Having seen something like this before, let me make an educated guess. Natural gas does not have an odor. So to allow people to be able to tell there is natural gas present in case of a leak, utilities add an odorant to the gas. This substance is called methyl mercaptan and it stinks to high heaven. The mercaptan is added at a metering station. Quantities added are carefully calibrated so that the mercaptan will be destroyed when the natural gas is burned. I have seen the result when one of the meters stuck and far too much mercaptan was added to the gas. There was so much, that it did not get destroyed in the combustion process. Pretty soon, people all over whole sections of the city I lived in were calling and reporting gas leaks.

I'd be about willing to bet that this is exactly what is happening in New York right now.

A Short Treatise On A Sticky Subject

Today I had occasion to need an adhesive bandage. Many people call these “Band-Aids” which is, of course, incorrect. That name is a brand name, not the generic nom-de-booboo-cover. But I did need one, having managed to get a spot of an infection on a finger. So, it’s off to the medicine cabinet in search of a covering for the wound.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I have relatively young children around the house. They are no longer toddlers, so they are past the recreational bandaging stage. That would be when the little tykes discover the joys of sticking a bandage over an imaginary booboo. Moms everywhere indulge this little attention getting device by slapping one over a completely fictitious wound. Or one that, while it actually exists, is no more than three or four microns across. At the deep end, so to speak. But this leads to the big problem of modern American life. That is, there is never a bandage, Band-Aid brand or otherwise, around when you really need one. And I mean never.

Smart parents learn early that there are two basic types of adhesive bandages, regardless of brand name. They are the “irremovable” and the “stick-proof” types. The irremovable type can take as long as twenty years to work loose on its own. Attempts to remove the bandage before then will – inevitably – involve loss of hair, skin or in extreme cases actual bone as well as the bandage. The stick-proof type, on the other hand, is manufactured with no actual adhesive whatsoever. It simply will not stay in one place for anything longer than a nanosecond. A harsh look will send it scurrying for the floor.

So savvy parents figure out that while they might have to indulge the little beggars when they demand something be stuck across their latest fictional mishap, they darn well better keep a secret stash of the good stuff around. A sort of a hedge fund against the inevitable real need, if you will. A stock of the stick-proof variety for fictional wounds and the real bandages held in reserve. This leads to yet another problem later in life. You see, the children figure out fairly quickly that there actually are some bandages hidden away even if Mommy says there aren’t. And when they get older, they find them.

They band together and form search teams to accomplish this. They will root through every cabinet, drawer, cupboard, shoe box or envelope in the house. They will even invert shoes and shake them to see if bandages fall out. They’ll invert and shake the pets if necessary. But they will find and use every bandage in the house.

Which is what I found had happened tonight. I went to get a bandage and there were only some of the stick-proof variety left over from when the kids were smaller. Quite dusty and not at all improved in actual adhesive quality by virtue of aging. All of the secret stashes had been looted as completely as an Egyptian tomb. Even the pets. And there I was placing a stick-proof bandage on my finger and securing it with duct tape.

If they ever realize I hide that in my underwear drawer, I’m doomed.

Indecent Interval

Back in the early 1970s, the nation was embroiled in a very unpopular war in Vietnam. Additionally, a third rate burglary at a Washington building forever changed American politics and political reporting by mandating the attachment of the suffix "gate" to every damn thing in the world since then. But I digress.

Yesterday, a decent man who did his best to help the country through the aftermath of all that mess - and quite a lot more that happened to be happening right about then - died. Jerry Ford deserved better treatment then he got from the media and from the public as well. And, for the most part, media coverage since his death has acknowledged those facts.

But there are a few people who have used the occasion of Gerald Ford's passing to launch attacks on either Ford - for daring to pardon Nixon - or as a vehicle to attack the current administration. Frank Snepp wrote a book after the Vietnam war that charged that Washington had arranged a "decent interval" between the withdrawal of American troops and the fall of Saigon. He was sued by the CIA because of that book, and lost. (Jimmy Carter's administration drove the lawsuit to completion, BTW.) I think the folks who are using Gerald Ford's death as a springboard are indulging in an indecent interval, here. Could we at least pay our respects and give a decent man a decent burial before we start again with the endless attacks?

Yes, I am talking to you, Bob Woodward. And to a number of left wing bloggers as well.

Daisy Bell Would Just Be Turning 19!

An enormously funny article - a rant almost - from the Guardian of all places. Written by Marina Hyde, it points to the absurd campaign by Bono, the so-called man of the year, to extend copyright protection of music from the current 50 years to a staggering 95 years. To be fair, it isn't just Bono, he's only one of 4,500 artistes who signed on to the campaign. But, please, read what Hyde wrote.

There is a moment in the spoof rock documentary This is Spinal Tap when a reporter poses a crushingly direct question to the eponymous band's lead singer at the wrap party for their disastrous US tour. "Is this, like, your last waltz?" he wonders. "Or are you going to milk it for a few more years in Europe?"

This vignette was called to mind by the full-page advertisement placed by 4,500 artists in Thursday's Financial Times that petitioned the government to extend the copyright on sound recordings to 95 years from the current 50. Anyone who assumed that this was these musicians' last waltz - or perhaps an elaborate ploy by Kiri Te Kanawa to get her name in the papers again - should set their faces to stunned. Now that the government has accepted the Gowers review recommendation that changing the law will give little public benefit, this ragtag army of multimillionaires and wronged creatives will be milking this one all the way to the European courts, even if the suggestion that in 95 years anyone will be dusting down a Katie Melua recording seems a triumph of optimism over sanity.

It was, of course, barely a fortnight ago that readers of these pages were pleased to take a lesson in political theory from my temporary Guardian colleague Mick Hucknall, the lead singer of Simply Red and a signatory of the aforementioned ad, who opened a presumably self-parodic opinion piece with the statement "copyright is fundamentally socialist". Mick then contrived to conflate notions of intellectual property - and there's something about "property" that grates with our fifth-form Marxist's thesis - with solid leftwing values, though I'm afraid I'd rather lost track of his point by the second mention of "the free flow of ideas", and realised we were being asked to conceive of a Beverley Sisters track as such.

Now aside from the absolutely incredibly egotistical pose struck by Bono in his Time Magazine picture (look at me! I'm significant!), as Hyde says, "….that this increasingly preposterous man should have spoken out on the business is hardly a surprise." But consider for a moment what this campaign would accomplish! If this law had been in effect for more than the past century, the song Daisy Bell (also known as A Bicycle Built for Two) would have been in the public domain for only 19 years today. Rock on, Garth!

And it would be using a walker built for two. Why, that's even better than the real thing!

Packing Heat

Steve Chapman has a good piece up over at Real Clear Politics about concealed carry permits, the facts versus the scaremongering. The fact is that the horrific, lurid predictions that the gun control zealots keep spouting have not come true. And there is a good reason for that.

It may not be true, as some experts believe, that America has gotten safer because more people are legally packing heat. But it's impossible to claim that the change has made us less safe.

At the outset of this experiment, gun opponents forecast that hot-tempered pistoleros would spray bullets at the slightest provocation, requiring the rest of us to wade through rivers of blood just to cross the street. In fact, one of the most conspicous facts about handgun licensees is their mild temper. It's rare for them to commit crimes, and even rarer for them to use their firearms to commit crimes.

A report by the Texas Department of Public Safety found that in a state with more than 200,000 people licensed to carry guns, only 180 were convicted of crimes in 2001, and most of those crimes didn't involve firearms. Only one licensee was convicted of murder. Florida, which has nearly 400,000 permit holders, revoked only 330 licenses last year — about one out of every 1,200.

This record should not be surprising. As a rule, concealed-carry licenses are off-limits to anyone with a history of crime, substance abuse, drunk driving or serious mental illness, and most states require safety training. In any case, people who are inclined to commit mayhem generally don't seek state licenses to carry guns, any more than they ask permission to break into houses or beat up girlfriends. It's the law-abiding folks who apply for licenses.

Why would these peaceable souls want to take their guns when hiking or camping in a national park? Same reason they might take them other places: a desire to protect themselves. Though federal lands are mostly safe, they sometimes play host to crime. In fact, park rangers are far more likely to be assaulted or killed than FBI agents.

Of course the rivers of blood meme still comes up whenever a state enacts a CCW law. Of course the grim predictions simply never happen. And Chapman is precisely correct, when you give law-abiding citizens the right to carry concealed weapons, they remain law-abiding. It has always been the criminal types who don't get licenses for anything that have been the problem.

Jost Van Dyke

The New York Times has an article up today about Jost Van Dyke, one of the islands in the British Virgin Islands. Now the reason this caught my eye is that my family and I went there on a day trip when we were down in the US Virgin Islands for a week. It brought back memories. The article talks about several places we visited while we were there including the Soggy Dollar Bar and Foxy's. The Soggy Dollar swears they invented the Painkiller, a cocktail you find at just about every bar down there. Just about everybody swears they invented it, too. But the Soggy Dollar is a fun place and it is right on one of the prettiest beaches in the world.

Foxy's was closed when the writer of this piece was there, so he missed a real treat. The food there is fabulous as I recall and Foxy is worth making the trip for all by himself. We stopped there for lunch and Foxy provided the floor show. He dragged out a battered old guitar and entertained everyone with songs he made up on the spot. Or maybe the songs were well honed and he simply inserted the commentary on the people listening. Whatever, he was a great host.

Just a bit of a departure from the usual. I don't do much travel blogging after all.

Best Halloween Parade Float EVER!

Anyone who has had a young son in the Cub Scouts knows that a) boys WILL be boys and b) groups of young boys when put in close proximity will try the patience of a saint. This is a fact of parenting that nobody ever tells you about in advance. Probably because those who have been through it want to see others suffer as they have. Now the boys don't even have to intentionally be trying to misbehave to cause mayhem. No, it is just the close proximity that produces unexpected results. And occasional mayhem. And more mayhem. Often.

And so we come to the annual Halloween parade in Bath, Pennsylvania.

Mayor Betty Fields said Wednesday the parade had started normally Tuesday night and had gone about 500 yards.

"All of a sudden the back of the truck started on fire," Fields said.

Fortunately, a parade means fire trucks. The Klecknersville Rangers Volunteer Fire Co., from Moore Township, was behind the Cub Scouts and quickly snuffed the flames.

Jason Harhart of the Klecknersville Rangers said it was unclear how the fire started. No injuries were reported. Fields said the parade continued on, and she gave the Cub Scouts a loyalty award for sticking with it.

Having been around the little monsters darlings when mishaps have occurred, I can absolutely guarantee that at least one of the Cub Scouts uttered the words in the title of this post, or ones very similar, shortly after they got their award. Or even before.

The Netherlands Loss. Our Gain.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an exile yet again has finally come home. At least to her spiritual home, according to George Will. She has left the Netherlands and is now living in the United States, working at the American Enterprise Institute. She's working on a book that will, undoubtedly, get her even more death threats than she already lives under. She cares not at all. Home at last.

She calls herself "a dissident of Islam" because, given what Allah supposedly enjoins and what she knows is right, "the cognitive dissonance is, for me, too much." She says she is not "a militant atheist," but the emphasis is on the adjective.

Slender, elegant, stylish and articulate (in English, Dutch and Swahili), she has found an intellectual home here at the American Enterprise Institute, where she is writing a book that imagines Muhammad meeting, in the New York Public Library, three thinkers — John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Hayek and Karl Popper, each a hero of the unending struggle between (to take the title of Popper's 1945 masterpiece) "The Open Society and Its Enemies." Islamic extremists — the sort who were unhinged by some Danish cartoons — will be enraged. She is unperturbed.

Neither is she pessimistic about the West. It has, she says, "the drive to innovate." But Europe, she thinks, is invertebrate. After two generations without war, Europeans "have no idea what an enemy is." And they think, she says, that leadership is an antiquated notion because they believe that caring governments can socialize everyone to behave well, thereby erasing personal accountability and responsibility. "I can't even tell it without laughing," she says, laughing softly. Clearly she is where she belongs, at last.

Read the whole thing. Hirsi Ali is a true inspiration, despite what some of the Dutch did to her at the end. They lost a lot. We are all the richer for their shortsightedness.

UPDATE: Clarified that it was not all of the Dutch people who tried to get rid of Hirsi Ali. Michael van der Galien pointed that out in comments. I knew Michael was a very strong supporter of hers and was very upset with the government over the treatment of Hirsi Ali.