I filled out my US Census form this morning and will put it in the mail. I have never had such a bad feeling before about releasing information to my government nor do I remember being so annoyed at the use of this information. The Constitution directs that citizens be counted expressly for the purpose of determining the apportionment of Representatives. In that vein, it doesn’t make any provision for how old we are nor whether we own or rent our residence. While it might be useful to avoid double counting, it also doesn’t require our names, our age or birthdates. In particular, with the adoption of the 14th Amendment there is no reason to determine the race or ethnicity of individual residents. All that is intrusion of government into my household – but then the Constitution doesn’t allow for income taxes (until the 17th Amendment), the registration of fire arms purchases, or any number of other affronts on our freedom.
My first inclination was to scrawl a big “2” on the form and send it back. However I knew that would only result in some poor knucklehead showing up at my door to do a census in person which would cost us all additional money. I thought of answering the race question by marking “Other” and then penning in “American” as some e-mails have suggested or “Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian Mix” – but again, I figured that would trigger some other knucklehead to call me to figure out what that meant. So as a generally obedient Obama serf I dutifully filled out the form for mailing.
Earlier in the week I received one of the mass e-mails from the Chairman of our County Board of Supervisors encouraging me to send the census form back because the Federal government would distribute more than $400 Billion next year based on the results of the census. Imagine that. It begs the question – what if the Federal Government hadn’t taken that money from us in the first place? Then they wouldn’t have to maintain offices and people (101,000 in the IRS alone) to first steal our money and then redistribute it. But then as a proper serf, mine is not to reason why, mine is but to pay and die (with apologies to Rudyard Kipling).
I am offended that we have been inundated with commercials on television and radio about “getting our fair share.” I had my fair share because I worked for it, I earned it. However the Federal Government took my money and now I have to surrender information about my family in order to get a portion of it back. I helped pay for the commercials, the mailing, and the knuckleheads that will be walking around asking more intrusive questions. The only information that the government is entitled to have is: “2”
I am offended that my government is so race obsessed when they should be colorblind. What possible difference could it make to the government what flavor Hispanic a person is or whether they are white, brown, black, red, or yellow? What will Barack Obama put on his form? Black? White? Or Other? If there is a potential benefit to there being an extra white person in America, then I want him to mark “Caucasian.” If the District of Columbia gets more of my money if it has an extra black person in it, then at a minimum I want Obama to record his white half on the form somewhere. In that Obama is from Chicago, I would like to know how many times he and his family is going to be counted there.
I’m particularly interested in what possible difference it could make to the Federal Government whether a person of Hispanic extraction is Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, or other Hispanic. Why would Venezuelans, Colombians, Hondurans, and a host of others be lumped into the “Hispanic – other” category? There has to be more Brazilians around than Cubans – but then they speak Portuguese – does that make a difference? What if my mother had believed in freedom and fled Castro’s Cuba and my father had believed in freedom and fled Chavez’s Venezuela. Would I be a Cuban, a Hispanic-other, or “Some other race?” And again – what possible difference could it make to the Federal Government? Why isn’t the government that curious about people of Asian dissent? Isn’t it every bit as important to know if someone was Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Pilipino, Tibetan, Vietnamese, or Laotian? Would someone benefit somewhere if I marked “Other” and penned in “Australian Aborigine?”
The only question that the Federal Government should have asked – and they didn’t – is “Are you a legal resident of the United States of America?” Then the next question should be, “If you marked “no” then when are you leaving?”
Conservative Resistance – Day 509
Days until we can refocus our government - 219
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