// Starting in the late 19th century, the U.S. created large psychiatric hospitals, often in the countryside, known as asylums, for the mentally ill. Asylums were a major progressive achievement because they delivered, for many decades, significantly more humane, evidence-based care to people who, until then, had often been neglected, a…
// Starting in the late 19th century, the U.S. created large psychiatric hospitals, often in the countryside, known as asylums, for the mentally ill. Asylums were a major progressive achievement because they delivered, for many decades, significantly more humane, evidence-based care to people who, until then, had often been neglected, abused, or even killed.
But by the middle of the 20th century, the reputation of psychiatric hospitals was in tatters—and deservedly so. //
Reform. If a necessary thing is performing badly, remove the bad and make it better. Instead, the progressive minds saw the buildings, decided that they looked so awful that they must have been the cause of their revulsion, destroyed them, and "liberated" everyone inside. The most pernicious flaw in the progressive outlook is probably the primal urge to destroy.
// Starting in the late 19th century, the U.S. created large psychiatric hospitals, often in the countryside, known as asylums, for the mentally ill. Asylums were a major progressive achievement because they delivered, for many decades, significantly more humane, evidence-based care to people who, until then, had often been neglected, abused, or even killed.
But by the middle of the 20th century, the reputation of psychiatric hospitals was in tatters—and deservedly so. //
Reform. If a necessary thing is performing badly, remove the bad and make it better. Instead, the progressive minds saw the buildings, decided that they looked so awful that they must have been the cause of their revulsion, destroyed them, and "liberated" everyone inside. The most pernicious flaw in the progressive outlook is probably the primal urge to destroy.