As another Northern Star columnist once pointed out, the Bush administration has a habit of naming its worst ideas really good-sounding names. This summer, President Bush announced a plan to screen all Americans for mental illness, beginning with schoolchildren and teachers. Termed the “New Freedom Commission on Mental Health,” the initiative aims to identify the mentally-ill and prescribe the appropriate course of drug treatment.

I probably don’t have to mention that the commissioners on this project were mainly pharmaceutical-industry honchos whose companies stand to reap windfall profits from drugging additional millions of Americans. And I probably don’t have to mention that the commission’s report recommends using the newest and most expensive drugs for treatment. What a coincidence!

There are at least two issues at stake here. First, helping the undiagnosed mentally ill is a laudable notion, but the motives behind such a move are, shall we say, a bit suspect. The big pharmaceutical companies, which now spend more money on advertising than on research and development, contribute heavily to both the Democrats and Republicans, but they enjoy an especially close relationship with the Bush family. George I sat on the board of directors of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, as did George II’s good friend and former Enron CEO Kenny-boy Lay. The current president also appointed former Eli Lilly vice president Mitch Daniels as his director of Management and Budget and former Eli Lilly president Sidney Taurel to the Homeland Security Advisory Council. There’s a lot of mutual back-scratching going on here.

Second, and perhaps more troubling, is the notion that the government has any business getting into your head. The New Freedom Initiative’s potential for privacy invasion is monumental, as is the potential for abuse. Who’s deciding what’s crazy and what’s normal? Will a conservative Republican president construe different results from these tests than a liberal Democrat president? What would each scenario mean to you?

It’s true that there is no constitutional guarantee of privacy. But is the expectation of privacy not implicitly sanctioned by government in our traditions of the secret voting ballot, or the Fourth Amendment? Privacy affirms our dignity as individuals with inalienable rights to our own thoughts and inner lives. It is not the role of the state to approve or disapprove of my thoughts and feelings.

Fortunately, not everyone in government thinks this is a good idea. Republican Texas congressman and doctor Ron Paul writes, “Parents, children and their private doctors should decide whether a child has mental-health problems, not government bureaucrats … How in the world have we allowed government to become so powerful and arrogant that it assumes it can force children to accept psychiatric treatment whether parents object or not?”

How indeed. Remember that when it comes time to vote next month.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.