Clever Name TBD

For whatever reason, the Republican National Committee think's I'm on their team, which is suprising since I registered as a Democrat to vote in the only primary that mattered this season. Anyway, the RNC sends me a lot of mail, including, twice now, the GOP Census, in which they ask questions to gauge the level of support I and other RNC fans have for RNC initiatives.

It seems this is really a survey to see how many lemmings exist out there who are RNC members are will support anything, given enough propaganda. The reason I say that is that the questions are terrible; any hack who took a college course in surveys and statistics would looks at this thing and puke, because the class was really hard, and here, someone got paid to create a survey that's clearly not worthy anything above an F in such a class. In starts:

1. Do you support President Bush's initiatives to promote the safety and security of all Americans?
2. Do you support the use of air strikes against any country that offers safe harbor or aid to individuals or organizations committed to further attacks on America?
3. Do you continue to support increasing the amount of security at airports, train stations and all government buildings including monuments and museums?

These questions are both leading and overly broad. The survey isn't a survey. It's propaganda disguised as a survey.

I'm all for increased security, I guess, but I also know that air travel, which sucked in the extreme before 9/11, hasn't gotten any more fun since then. A friend of mine, who is a British citizen, waited a year to get an appointment at INS. Due to the increased security, it took him a very long time to get into the building. He showed up two minutes late, so they sent him home. Now, I know INS is not answerable in any way to its customers, which is problematic at best, but that was mean.

The air strikes question is pretty scary. Also leading, I can only assume that it's intent it to generate a conclusion that Americans, at least the patriotic RNC members, as all for bombing any country (say, France) because there are suspected terrorists in that country and their laws (the government) don't encourage them to turn them over to a witch trial in the U.S., not that any trial (witch or otherwise) would necessarily be offered by the present U.S. government at all. All men are created equal, as long as they are one of us.

The previous survey I got had an even scarier question. It asked (paraphrased from memory):

Some people are complaining that the FBI is violating the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens in its efforts to fight terrorism. Is this acceptable if it results in the capture of more terrorists?

The RNC actually is asking it's members if it's OK to ignore the Constitution of the United States in an effort to protect U.S. interests? Members of the U.S. military are sworn to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the political party supporting the Commander-in-Chief wants to know, while soldiers are in Iraq fighting for American values, whether it's OK to toss the Constitution out in the domestic war on terror. Maybe we need the soldiers more at home.