On April 29, 2002, President George W. Bush issued an executive order creating a new commission charged with finding ways to "improve America's mental health service delivery system." One year later, the Orwellian-sounding New Freedom Commission on Mental Health released its findings. Its final report recommended mental health screening for all Americans and, in a proposal that should alarm parents everywhere, recommended that the nation's schools be used to assess the mental health of all schoolchildren.

While each new federal plan or program seems more ludicrous than the last, the commission's desire to screen the mental health of all Americans is not just another big government boondoggle. From its "newspeak" name to its ambitious proposals, the plan to assess the mental health of all Americans is similar to the Bush administration's other totalitarian constructions, from the Department of Homeland Security to the infamous Patriot Act.