Before I begin to look at his role as a psychiatrist, I want to confirm that Major Nidal Malik Hasan was driven by religious ideology. For years he openly claimed that the War on Terror is a war on Muslims. He announced on the Internet and to his fellow soldiers in a course on public health that a Muslim suicide bomber should be praised for killing a hundred soldiers. It’s reported that fellow soldiers warned his superiors that he was a ticking time bomb.

There are many problems within our legal system that could benefit from reform. But within the area in which I have great experience as a psychiatric expert, so-called tort reform has already gone too far. It is already too difficult for injured patients or their surviving families to bring malpractice suits against physicians and health facilities, and product liability suits against drug companies, even when their cases have great merit. I believe in private health care and I believe in the free market, but liberty requires checks and balances. The right to sue medical practitioners and pharmaceutical companies provides a necessary control in our free market system, as well as a means for individuals to seek compensation and justice.

For a few years when I was a young man, I studied Marxism, criticized capitalism, understood class conflict, and believed in redistributing wealth. I rejected patriotism and God. All this went on inside my head. It’s how I thought about economics, politics, and humanity for a few dismal years of my intellectual life.

If you are one of those who can’t bear to think or to say, “Wow, I’m an American!” I hope you will read the book. It could change your life — not only your political views but also how you live your everyday life and make your everyday choices. “Wow, I’m an American!” is about the Founders, what they fought for, what they believed in, how they lived their lives, and how we can improve our own personal lives by applying the same principles and ideals.

With the looming probability of a “public option” as a prelude to full-blown national health care, it’s important examine the most threatening and even tragic unintended consequences for our society and morality. In recent months, my concerns about these and other drastic political changes have led me to shift my focus from psychiatric reform to the future of America, and I have recently published Wow, I’m an American! How to Live Like Our Heroic Founders.

A new study, published Monday in the American Journal of Psychiatry, confirms what I’ve been warning about for years in my scientific books and articles. The stimulants used to treat children for so-called ADHD can cause sudden cardiac arrest and death in kids. The study was published by the journal online in advance of regular publication in the near future. On Monday, I had the opportunity to comment on the study on Good Morning America. Here is more detail.

As progressive idealists, you seem nearer than ever to achieving many of your goals for America. At the least, you have made a sharp turn in the direction you have sought for so long. You have a president of the United States and a Congress who seem devoted to the dreams of those who seek social justice, a less prejudiced and less predatory society, a fair if not equal distribution of wealth, more power to the working class, a more closely regulated economic system, and a more gentle international hand. You have a government that largely shares your concerns about health care, education and the environment.

Here are the starting facts: Death by suicide is at record levels in the armed services. Simultaneously the use of antidepressant drugs is also at record levels, including brand names like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa and Lexapro.

America and Australia are two countries I vastly admire. Nonetheless, they are continuing to abuse psychiatric patients with electroshock treatment (ECT). In America involuntary adults are being shocked despite the best efforts of psychiatric reformers (Oaks, 2009). In Australia psychiatrists have taken shock treatment to a new level of barbarity by shocking 55 toddlers age four and younger in Victoria (Hale, 2009).

It was recently disclosed that two murderers, one extremely notorious, were probably taking antidepressants at the time of their crimes, but hardly anyone is taking notice.