Active Citizens Day. Today marks the day when the citizens of the United States recognized the limits of democracy. It also marks the day when psychiatrists exactly 40 years later, finally realized the limits of their professional power. Both powerful institutions were humbled by the effectiveness of organized resistance from citizens’ intent on defining their own happiness.
In 1933, the 21st Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America came into affect, repealing the 18th Amendment which had prohibited the making, distribution and sale of alcohol. The prohibition was an unmitigated disaster, even though it had been promulgated as a result of democratic processes and was itself the result of a massive citizens’ movement against alcohol abuse and use.
Exactly four decades later the American Psychiatric Association voted on this day in 1973, to expunge the classification of homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder in its diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSMII).
What oppressive measures are being instituted against your happiness by the state and the professionals who claim to know better?
– Posted by Douglas Racionzer (serendipiday.blogspot.com)