QUOTE(Somey @ Sat 21st April 2012, 5:39am)
Frankly, both of you are indulging in a lot of low-value binary thinking here. "He's either insane or he's not," "Wikipedia is either a cause of sociopathy or it isn't," etc., etc. No in-betweens for you!
Don't any of you see shades of grey in anything? Degrees of sanity/insanity, degrees of responsibility, culpability? Obviously Mr. Fred has a problem seeing differences between human beings in general, as he apparently despises just about all of them, but that happens when you get older, I guess. (IQ-related claims notwithstanding.)
A person can be insane for lots of reasons. Doesn't have to be just one, in fact there almost never is just one. Lots of things can contribute, make things better, make things worse. People are complicated. The point here, as if it wasn't obvious to anyone without an agenda, is that Wikipedia would have made things worse in this particular case. And it would be a simple-enough observation, even if it wasn't based on his own statements.
Sorry this really is you at your inbetweening daftest, Somey. Where is your subtly here? This is not even just a legal matter.
As you I'm sure you know, Mr. Fred is unlikely to be over 50. Take it from me - mature adults don't use those particular meaning-isolated guff words over here. I think you can tell he's young straight away - he's too childish in general. I might be wrong (about the literal age) - by hey - how can I know for sure?
Secondly, we get a lot on this story in the UK, obviously. Breivik actually claimed to come here for a right wing meeting (and that may not even be true). I'm not being "binary - his 'sanity' is a clinical decision that attached to law.
It's just such an enormously important distinction in Europe, as we've suffered so terribly from fascism in the past. Breivik (who they accept could be a liar and actually a fantasist too - but not within the definition of insane) is part of a wider wave of fascism (properly organised or otherwise) that Mr Fred no-doubt won't accept is
really there. It is just not beneficial for any of us to risk underestimating fascism by labelling its various supporters (the swastika wearers esp) 'insane', when they are simply as committed as so very many have been in the past.
Europe has been predominantly on the right for years now, and there have been unsubtle mutterings about 'multiculturalism' not working from the top of actual governments - most hideously from Merkel in Germany, and unbelievably winked at by Cameron. They esp pick up on this irresponsible stupidity in Scandinavia (the socialist people - not just Breivik types), where they've done so much to support broadening their society. We don't have Labour camps like that in the UK for example - they would love it, but simply aren't socialist and progressive enough any more.
They have to make the distinction here for a number of reasons.