Thursday, March 04, 2010

Polishing Away the “Patina of Legitimacy”

Wendy McElroy has posted an interesting essay titled All politicians and candidates threaten my freedom.  The title to the essay, itself, speaks a truth which should be self evident, but Wendy expands on this in a thoughtful manner, and in a manner which I would hope bring about deep, personal, individual reflection about what exactly is occurring when you mark an X on a ballot.  From Wendy’s piece.

The foregoing description of a “just” politician doesn’t describe any currently existing one. All politicians today assume office with the claim of having jurisdiction over the lives of people who did not vote for them, of people who opposed them or did not vote at all. The question for libertarians is: how can one human being properly assume immense power over the freedom and person of unconsenting others. If rights, like freedom of speech and association, are inalienable and equal-to-all, then how can you cast a vote that transfers control over my rights to another person? Especially, how can you do this against my will and over my protest? For a libertarian, the answer is clear. You cannot transfer or nullify another person’s rights by making an X on a ballot. All you can do is enable a power-seeker to assume a patina of legitimacy when he claims jurisdiction over and uses force on the unconsenting.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/04 at 02:32 PM
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Census 2010 Civil Disobedience, Sort Of

Census 2010 is quite close to hitting full stride, now that U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Groves’ dog sled ride is over, and the fifteen thousand dollar ($15,000.00) totem pole commerating Census 2010 has been carved and raised.

Census 2010 forms are now being delivered to homes across America by more conventional means than dog sleds, and individuals are considering whether to simply complete the census form, partially complete the census form, or simply ignore it.  I’ve encouraged Americans to skip Census 2010 as a form of polite, civil disobedience on multiple occasions in these pages, but each individual must decide for themselves whether they will complete the census form, partially complete the census form, or toss the census form into the round file.

What I would like to address is the partial completion of Census 2010 forms, which Diana Hsieh, amongest others in the blogosphere, discusses.  What is suggested, in these various discussions, is partial completion of the census form, i.e. answering only the question asking the number of individuals living at a certain GPS marked address.

While I appreciate the reasoning behind partial completion of the census form; providing the census bureau only the number of individuals living at a certain address; I think providing only this information is providing the State with exactly the information it most covets in order to maintain its aura of power and appearance of largesse.  To wit:

Census information affects the numbers of seats your state occupies in the U.S. House of Representatives. And people from many walks of life use census data to advocate for causes, rescue disaster victims, prevent diseases, research markets, locate pools of skilled workers and more.

When you do the math, it’s easy to see what an accurate count of residents can do for your community. Better infrastructure. More services. A brighter tomorrow for everyone. In fact, the information the census collects helps to determine how more than $400 billion dollars of federal funding each year is spent on infrastructure and services like:...

You’ll note in reading the above, which is taken from the How It Affects the Nation page of the Census 2010 website, that it is the count of individuals which is deemed most important to the census bureau, i.e. the State, in order to determine wealth redistribution policies, the number of representative overlords allocated per state, how to create more government serivces rather than less, and other assorted and sundry State instituted programs/legislation/etc. leading to that utopian “brighter tomorrow for everyone,” oh yeah!  Thus, if individuals only provide the census bureau with the number of individuals residing at a certain address, the bureau is being supplied with the exact information it most covets to maintain and expand their control of individual American lives, and the State will gladly thank you for your compliance.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/04 at 08:46 AM
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