Ah, the joys of being herded into packed rail cars in the hot summer!

As many as 70 people were involved in a massive brawl at two Metro Stations in Washington D.C. on Friday night.

At least four were injured in the incident which began at Gallery Place station in Washington D.C.

Washington D.C. Fire and EMS reported that a "large brawl" took place at the L'Enfant Plaza station, involving "poss mass casualty." EMS claimed to treated at least 7 patients and 3 teenagers have been arrested and are in custody .

Yet all around the country, bureaucrat rulers, city planners, and left wing thinkers of all varieties sit around trying to come up with strategies to try to "nudge" people into these awful metal boxes teeming with humanity.

Maybe I am anti-social, but it is my personal opinion that being crammed into buses and rail cars is profoundly unnatural. It triggers my yuck reflex -- and if there is anything to the theory some have call "the wisdom of repugnance," then maybe my instincts are telling me something wise. After all, as Dr. Leon Kass famously observed,

repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason's power fully to articulate it.

Why should my repugnance be controlling?

I mean, some people get turned on by getting crammed into things; back in the day, fraternity boys used to enjoy stuffing themselves into telephone booths.

So, if people are into that, it's not for me to judge them simply because of my repugnance, whether it is wise or not. If people want to cram themselves into crowded rail cars, that's their thing, and as a libertarian I would never tell them not to do it. As long as they don't ask me to pay for it, their behavior is not my legitimate concern.

Besides, I might be the one who is neurotic. There's even a phobia diagnosis for my repugnance, which is one of the oldest of them all.

Claustrophobia is typically thought to have two key symptoms: fear of restriction and fear of suffocation. A typical claustrophobic will fear restriction in at least one, if not several, of the following areas: small rooms, locked rooms, cars, tunnels, cellars, elevators, subway trains, caves, and crowded areas. Additionally, the fear of restriction can cause some claustrophobics to fear trivial matters such as sitting in a barber's chair or waiting in line at a grocery store simply out of a fear of confinement to a single space.

And to say that claustrophobes need treatment, wouldn't that be just as judgmental as it would be to say that people who like being crowded into metal boxes need treatment? Judgmentalism is bad, right?

The trouble with "to each his own" is that it sounds so dull, so unexciting. As boring as new age schmaltz. Value judgments about the relative wisdom of disease (or diseased wisdom) are much more exciting.

So I'd say that calling something a disease is as much a value judgment as calling it wisdom, except if I said that I'd be making a value judgment. However, if I make a positive value judgment about others, and a self-deprecating one about myself, few are likely to be offended, even though I am making the same point, right?

So I can say, "your disease is wisdom, and my wisdom is disease."

But not vice versa.

(God Heaven forbid that I might offend!)