Here is an interesting article, What A Psychiatrist Won’t Tell You About The Candidates: Why the Goldwater Rule Gags Psychiatrists, but I heartily disagree with its conclusions. Psychiatrists are not god-like in their mental health diagnostic opinions of persons they have not personally evaluated. The Goldwater Rule is there for a reason. In 1964 there was a serious abuse of the professional aura of legitimacy regarding psychiatry when 1,200 psychiatrists passed judgment on Barry Goldwater’s mental health and fitness for the presidency for clearly partisan political reasons. Goldwater sued for libel and won. As in the former Soviet Union (and in some regimes today) psychiatry has served as an all-too-willing and compliant tool of an intrusive, repressive, and authoritarian Therapeutic State.

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