This year's census saw an unusually open expression of this scientific dream, most explicitly in the now familiar promotional campaign encouraging citizens to fill out their census forms. That campaign, through television, print and billboard advertising, tried to convince us that the census alone can determine what sort of government services we get. It is as if the political process had in fact, as the dreamers only wish it could be, been replaced by a tidy scientific formula which assigns resources based on the relevant objective criteria. So very much is wrong with the assumptions that underlie this increasingly pervasive worldview. What we want ceases to be relevant, and what we are defines our relationship with government and with our fellow citizens.
Identity replaces principle, and studies replace discourse.
Second, it assumes that it is the proper role of the state to dole out said goodies. The state is no longer seen as a necessary evil that exists merely to protect us, our property, our commerce, and our rights. It now exists, it would seem, to provide us with material goods. The purpose of the census has changed from ensuring representation to securing direct services. Third, we find in examining the attitudes behind the census campaign that our understanding of our rights as citizens has also changed.