American Politics Journal -- GOP Hits the Panic Button



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When Will We Come To Our Census?
by Joe Colwell

Tuesday, April 4, 2000 (AmpolNS) -- "It's Quick, It's Easy, and It's the Law."

That's the slogan our government uses to coerce young men to register for the draft when they turn 18 years old.

Over 99% comply.

The people at the Census Bureau should have it so easy. They are having a little difficulty these days because some misinformed people -- mostly right wingers who refuse to recognize the full legitimacy of government unless Republicans are in charge -- refused to answer the "intrusive" questions on the census long form.

What's so confusing about these people's aversion to the census questions is that conservatives are notorious for their intolerance for any non-conservative who doesn't offer selfless service to country.

In fact, it stretches credulity to see the same people who condemned Bill Clinton for not wanting to fight a war he opposed now having refused to answer the census questions because they now claim their country is asking for a little too damn much.

Let's compare this big, bad census with the Vietnam war:

During the Vietnam war, many young men were required to provide the government with their school status, notify the government if they moved, and report for induction if and when government decided.

The induction process included some questions and procedures that were a lot more personal than those found on those Census questionnaires:

What is your religion?

Are you gay?

Do you wet the bed?

What are your phobias?

After providing answers to a couple of hundred more questions, most not as personal -- but far more personal that the Census questions -- the process continued, and the government took your fingerprints and stuck a needle in your arm to draw your blood. Before the day was over, the government would squeeze your testicles and actually do what many now crudely accuse government of doing with its finger!

A few harmless questions about all of your family members, your political beliefs, and perhaps a quick visit to the psychiatrist completed your day.

If government decided so, you worked where they wanted, when they wanted, for the pay they decided. You might have been ordered to kill; you might even have been asked to die.

For most, this process of doing what their government asked of them took three years.

Conservatives in America condemned anyone who even questioned this practice.

Today, when these same conservatives are asked to answer some simple questions about driving distance to work, income, and education, they are in an uproar. The most personal questions are about disabilities and lack of ability to remember -- a condition with which these people are certainly afflicted. Answering all the questions should take less time that an Army inductee would spend driving his car to the processing station.

But last week, there suddenly appeared a "groundswell" of people who talked openly of refusing to answer their census questions!

They are the Contra-Census Objectors.

And none other than George W. Bush expressed sympathy with the Contra-Census Objectors -- and said that he might be a C.O. if he were asked such questions.

Three bits of advice are warranted for Mr. Bush:

1) there are no cocaine questions;

2) you're not allowed to answer, "Compassionate Conservative" when you don't know the answer, like you do on the campaign trail; and

3) filling out the census is required by law, and serious candidates for president don't volunteer that they are iffy about obeying all the laws of the land.

The 2000 Census is a right-wing talk radio red herring, an issue of the week because the NRA, the Independent Counsel Report, Clinton's trip to Southeast Asia and oil prices are all losing issues for the right as of now. Talk radio sheep are in a tizzy over this big, bad census -- as if knowing how much home heating oil you use would be of any use to Big Brother, anyway. And lo and behold, there's George W., talking like some misinformed talk radio caller, stating he's against the Census questions and he's not sure if he'd answer them. George W. is now "George from Austin, Texas," parroting the radio hosts, and it's a disgusting sight indeed.

Congress authorized those questions because having that data would help them run a more efficient government. The Census of 1800 asked questions about income and housing, yet conservatives want us to believe that the founding fathers didn't understand what the founding fathers intended the Census to do! The current batch of Census questions were on George's dad's 1990 Census, and that -- coupled with the fact that the Republican-led Congress signed off on these questions -- makes George W. Bush look like he understands very little of the history of the country he wants to run.

Here we are in the information age, and the conservatives who purportedly want more efficient government now want government to operate with flawed and incomplete information. Well over 95% of Americans will eventually fill out their census, but George W. can't confidently count himself among them. He's says he's a little afraid of the Census. We have a candidate who implies that he's not in the 5th percentile in courage and is outperformed by 19 out of 20 Americans in civic duty; yet the press, so far at least, treats this stunning admission as a non-story.

The irony in all this is that privacy is primarily a liberal issue.

Protecting the privacy of medical records and library records are liberal causes; it's liberal groups and Democratic attorneys general who are at the forefront of protecting internet privacy. And most older conservatives approve of all the privacy violations that occurred in Hoover's FBI.

Yet we are led to believe that the same people who applauded Hoover's violations and the keeping of Red Squad files are refusing to do their civic duty because they can't trust government to look out for their interests.

If they believe Bill Clinton and his generation had a duty to put their lives in the government's hands for their war, then they should prove their commitment to civic duty and prove their bravery by shutting up and answering the questions.