Heroes and villains

I would like to elaborate more on the post below. Michelle Malkin is right to say that movies like One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest were influential in persuading us that we need to be more humane to the mentally ill. (It remains one of my favorite movies). But she is wrong to connect Saul Alinsky to the disastrous results of the legislation that freed so many of the mentally ill from institutionalization. No one was more quick to mock the political correctness of the Left than Saul Alinsky. I knew him, and heard him express his utter contempt of the Left's political correctness more powerfully than anyone I have known or read since his passing.

Many of us admire Ronald Reagan for many reasons. Malkin is right to praise him for his stance on gun control. However, he made a big mistake when he went along with the Left in California in their efforts to de-institutionalize the mentally ill. Reagan did it for fiscal, as well as humane reasons, but it has had disastrous consequences in terms of endangering the rest of us.