Reply #8: yes, but it's not really liberal or conservative ideology as a sane person would see it

[Yo_Mama]

A schizophrenic's brain has a lot of trouble holding and processing information, so they don't connect up ideas the way any normal person would. It seems like some of them seize upon some ideas with emotive power and use that power to support a more internally connected picture of the world, often with tragic results.

The Unabomber is one example of a schizophrenic who held what would usually be considered more "liberal" views, but in his case weren't.

Because they process ideas and concepts in a way that's quite different than a normal person would, these ideas frequently connect up in what seem amazingly random ways to a normal person. The external world and other people are very confusing when they are in psychotic episodes, and they often withdraw in terror, and become tremendously defensive.

It's possible, for example, for a schizophrenic to read an article postulating that vaccinations can have adverse effects (true for a small number of cases without a question), and then jump from that to the deep conviction that a doctor or nurse who tries to give him a shot is trying to kill him - even if he has been taken to the hospital for treatment of an infection and the shot is antibiotic.

Loughner's ideas, for example, were a mix of what would commonly be considered "left" and "right" - but none of those ideas really fit into the same integrated context that the vast mass of normal people carry in their cognition.

The diagnosis for this man will have to be confirmed, but it's probably correct.