WhatFinger


The SPLC sees little evidence of hate groups targeting the Census Bureau

Newsweek’s Lack of Knowledge of American History



History is not an easy subject. It takes decades, sometimes hundreds of them, for historians to come to a full understanding of what happened in any particular era. Sometimes, in fact, the truth is lost forever and only conjecture is left for the living to ponder. Still, it takes long, hard study and painstaking detective work to ferret out what really happened in the past, even the recent past.

Support Canada Free Press


Consequently, history isn’t something that your average journalist should attempt. This maxim couldn’t be proved out better than by a recent effort by Eve Conant of Newsweek. Conant so badly garbled the facts in her piece about America’s “anti-census sentiment” that one wished she’d take up writing cook books instead of articles based on historical facts. She didn’t even get current sentiment right, much less that of history. Conant begins her discussion of historical American anti-census sentiment by confusing the suspicion of census workers with that of the revenue agents that plagued backwoods moonshiners of the 1940s and 50s. She assumed in her piece that census agents were hated simply because they were from the government. Of course, it was Treasury Dept. Agents that were hated, not census workers. People may mistrust the government, but no one is up in arms about the census itself. Naturally it only took until the second paragraph before Conant blamed conservatives for fearmongering when she scolded that “this time around, that fear may be reaching new levels.” The reasons she gives are less than satisfying — for instance, conservatives are not saying the census is unconstitutional, they are saying that ACORN, the corrupt organization that Obama is trying to use to collect the data, is the problem — and even worse she uses this murder in Kentucky as an example of anti-census worker sentiment. Last month poor Bill Sparkman, a census worker, was found murdered and hanged from a tree in rural Kentucky with the word “fed” scrawled across his chest. Like so many others, Conant assumes without any proof at all that Sparkman was murdered because he was a census worker. “..and, for the first time in recent memory,” Conant worries, “census season has been kicked off not with a mailing, but a possible murder.” Like many another hyperbolic left-winger, Conant is keen to shoe-horn her assumptions of “anti-census sentiment” into Sparkman’s murder even though there isn’t a shred of proof to confirm why the man was murdered. Amusingly, Conant proves her own hyperbolic point is off base by citing the fact that even the extremely left leaning Southern Poverty Law Center cannot find any real anti-census sentiment anywhere saying, “… the SPLC sees little evidence of hate groups targeting the Census Bureau…” This after three paragraphs where she worries that there is, indeed, such sentiment abounding. Conant also garbles some Constitutional interpretation.
The Census Bureau just announced its largest advertising campaign ever—some $300 million—to urge Americans to do their constitutional duty and take part in the nationwide headcount.
No, Eve, there is no “Constitutional duty” to take part in the census. There is a Constitutional duty to implement one, but there is no corresponding duty to participate. No one is forced by order of law to participate in the census. Conant goes on to discuss the political football that the census always becomes. But, once again, this does not describe any anti-census sentiment. It describes the political problems of the day that the census naturally is applied to. But then comes the only real reason she wrote her piece, her attack on conservatives. Conant details one census controversy after another coming from the right side of the aisle. Conant describes such incidents as Minnesota Republican Representative Michelle Bachman’s claim that she won’t fill out the detailed questionnaire and will only tell the census the number of people living in her home, the worry that illegal aliens and gay marriages will be counted as legitimate census data and other such controversies over the census. The problem is that Conant presents all this turmoil as “anti-census” sentiment. But it isn’t. Conservatives are not generally saying that they are against a census. What they are against is the illicit use that census data will be used for. They are also against corrupt bargains with shadowy “community organizations” like ACORN getting federal funding to carry out the census. Finally, they are worried that census data will be used to redraw federal representation to reflect liberal agendas instead of to actually count legitimate Americans and legitimate statistics. But few if anyone on the right are against the census itself. Yet Conant’s entire story presents the right as anti-census, regardless. Of course, the worst thing is Conant’s blaming of Mr. Sparkamn’s death on conservatives. It is outrageous to say that conservatives want census workers dead and linking Sparkman’s death to the right is irresponsible, especially since there isn’t a single fact known about the motives for his murder.


View Comments

Warner Todd Huston -- Bio and Archives

Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as Breitbart.com, among many, many others. He has also written for several history magazines, has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows.

He is also the owner and operator of Publius’ Forum.


Sponsored