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Ross Levatter's Acceptance Remarks The 2007 Szasz Award True story: A few months ago I was filling out an application for a medical license for the state of Florida. Things went well until I came to Question 32: "Have you lost your civil rights?" So I answered, "Of course, hasn't everyone?" Question 32a was "If yes, date when civil rights were restored." I answered, "Not expected in this lifetime..." I'm still waiting to receive my Florida medical license. These things take time... The award I receive tonight is named after a famous psychiatrist, which leads me to think of various psychiatric diagnoses, and their implications. For instance, it is said that if you're not depressed you just haven't been paying attention. This is man's fate: depression or attention-deficit disorder. Awards are often a time of reflection, and on receiving this award I reflect on how I got involved in libertarian thought and met Tom Szasz. I think of my youth. Youth is an age when one believes that ideas will succeed simply because they are correct. Tom is no longer young, and neither am I. When I was young I, like most young people, had unlimited energy and was interested in everything. I felt mastering libertarian thought—the history, the philosophy, the ethics, the economics—was something easily done in the evenings after I had finished my undergraduate or medical studies. Clearly, my ideas and expectations were grandiose. Also absurd: Liberty and a dismantling of the state in a decade or two. The ideas, after all, were obviously correct. Simply informing people of that shouldn't be too difficult. Now that I've reached, likely exceeded, middle age, I see a state that in many ways is more powerful than anything imagined in my youth, both from a national security and, to use Tom's term, a pharmacratic perspective. This is, naturally, very depressing. It seems that being manic as a youth and depressed in middle age is a common tale. Only when these alternative perspectives shift in days or weeks do we call it a disease: bipolar, or manic/depressive, disorder. I suppose I could try lithium, but my preference would be to try a low flat tax coupled with a major reduction in government spending and a commitment to a non-interventionalist foreign policy. I promise we can go back to the status quo if I don't feel any better. I certainly want to thank the committee, and Tom himself, for the honor they bestow. I'm not quite sure exactly what I've done that justified winning an award for making, as the news release put it, "advances in civil liberties on a theoretical level," unless "theoretical level" is intended to mean "having no practical effect"; I see a former winner in the audience—Clint Bolick, everyone—who has authored Changing Course: Civil Rights at the Crossroads, Grassroots Tyranny: the Limits of Federalism, Unfinished Business: A Civil Rights Strategy for America's Third Century, several other books... Whereas, when it comes to a book of mine on civil liberties, I use as my guide and mentor Lord Acton.... I reviewed my written work on civil liberties before coming here tonight, as I had a few extra minutes; the best I could find was an unpublished note I wrote to myself in the early 1980s that says, "Civil liberties are good." So—can you tell?—I'm conflicted about receiving this award. These days, one way to express that is to talk of having multiple personalities. After much reflection, I have decided to share the plaque with my multiple personalities, but I'm keeping the check for myself. So, you can tell, I'm not crazy.... I would be horribly remiss if I did not take this opportunity to thank Jeff and Meg Singer for offering to throw this reception in honor of this Award, and for opening up their beautiful home to us all. Jeff, as I'm sure most all of you know, has done yeoman's work in pushing for individual liberty on multiple fronts over many years. My hat's off to him, and my admiration is profuse. Clearly, if you pick up any newspaper, he hasn't done enough, but I recall he also has a surgical practice… I also want to take this opportunity to congratulate Vladimir Bukovky, the Soviet dissident who won the Szasz Award this year in the general category. The press release indicates that Bukovky spent years in Soviet psychiatric prisons for opposing the communist regime, which is certainly more than I ever did, but I point out in my own defense that we can't all be so lucky as to be born into the Soviet regime. Seriously, it is a great honor to share this award, even tangentially, with a person of Mr. Bukovky's courage and convictions, and I applaud the committee on their choice. Tom Szasz emigrated to the United States from Hungary in 1938 at the age of 18. One year earlier, in 1937, a fellow Hungarian, Albert Szent-Györgyi, won the Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology. In 1970, at the age of 77, Szent-Györgyi was asked what he would do if he were 20 again. "Fornicate," he said, "and take drugs against the terrible strain of idiots who govern the world." That was 1970, when Richard Nixon was in charge. If Szent-Györgyi were still alive today, during the reign of Bush II, no doubt he'd be attending orgies while smoking crack. Because he was right, it is a terrible strain to live in a world governed by idiots, and worse than idiots. Part of the strain is realizing that whatever hope we have is, as the economists teach us, at the margin. Another 1776 cannot happen today, largely because, unlike then, most people do not want it. They fear it. I note in this context one of Szasz's latest books. (I've gotten into the habit, by the way, of never saying, "Szasz's latest book" because every time I check Amazon, he's got a new one. At 87, the man is still incredibly prolific. Coercion As Cure, his book on the history of psychiatry, came out this spring, but it is no longer his latest book.) In Coercion as Cure, Szasz tells the history of psychiatry in a way that is compelling, clear, factually accurate but at the same time, for most people, completely unbelievable. Because to believe it you have to understand that the goal of psychiatrists in treating psychoses is not to help their patients, but to keep those compelled to see them, prisoners called patients, from bothering others. Szasz has made numerous contributions in assisting those imprisoned under the guise of treatment to regain their freedom, and has also willingly gone to court to aid in imprisoning those who have violated the rights of others and attempted to escape punishment by claiming mental illness. If the very little I have done by way of publicizing Szasz's work in brief articles and blurbs of my own constitutes a theoretical contribution to the advancement of civil liberties, I humbly (not a word I usually use in self-reference, but quite appropriate here) accept this singular honor. Return to Szasz Award page |