Americans now seem to view social deviance of nearly every stripe—from criminality and drug use, to Attention Deficit Disorder and everyday schoolboy mischief—as a mental illness rooted in poor self-esteem and requiring government-sponsored therapy to fix. Ominously, the embrace of this therapeutic ethos has become a source of legitimation of expanded state power that otherwise would face stiff opposition, argues James L. Nolan, Jr., in his well-researched book, The Theraputic State: Justifying Government at Century’s End.

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