Thoughts On The Spurious Census

In watching this year’s NCAA tournament, one finds it hard to miss the hip commercials for the 2010 Census. Invariably, the emphasis of these ads is on people gaining “representation” in the form of their piece of the public funding pie. Personally, I find the whole parasitic charade sickening.

The Founders must be turning over in their graves knowing how much something as simple as the Census has been twisted as a result of a government that has so obfuscated the General Welfare clause that it has deemed the Constitution worthless. Where the Census was created with the purpose of representative apportionment, with the parties in power in the states unfortunately gerrymandering districts so as to solidify their political strongholds and marginalize their opponents, reflecting the transformation of our country, this time around the focus of the Census is on ensuring the proper allocation of $400 billion of public money.

Where are we as a nation when it becomes the patriotic thing to do to fill out a form for the purpose of sticking our paws in a $400 billion honeypot? The commercials would be far more honest if they merely stated, “Make sure to fill out the Census so you can feed at the collectivist trough.” What kind of message does it send to immigrants and the poor when we say that the key to improving one’s lot is to make sure one gets one’s fair ration of taxpayer money?

Leaving aside the fact that the programs funded according to Census data are often discriminatory in treating people differently on the basis of race and wealth, and that public spending will likely make people worse off, the principle alone in an ad campaign for the perversion of representation funded by all of us is Obamanable. Even if one feels that some of the $400 billion in funding is just, though I think that we can agree that a significant amount of the spending represents immoral coercive charity, the message that representation is about receiving handouts is a dubious one. But I suppose naturally this funding will help us achieve social, economic, environmental and Latino justice (which incidentally according to a recent Census training session at Columbia University hosted by US Census and Latino Justice reps focuses on things like suing for bilingual ballots, English be damned).

To these seekers of “justice,” I wonder if you ever considered whether the people that built this country were able to do so as a result of such government boondoggles or because of their own entrepreneurship, risk-taking and will to improve their lives and those of their children.

When it comes to the daily injustices we face as a people as a result of the perversion of our conception of justice, I find myself constantly turning back to Frederic Bastiat. Succinctly, on legal plunder Bastiat stated:

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law — which may be an isolated case — is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.

The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights…

Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system.

This is our system. At the point of a gun, the productive are forced to pay into a pool so that it can be redistributed according to political expedience. These acquired “rights” will not cease until gravity forces them under.

Think about how many days of each week we have to work to pay our tribute to the government. Without the middle man of the bureaucrat to legitimize such a scheme, the only way this could be carried out would be through outright theft. It would be akin to your neighbors walking over to your house, and making you empty out your wallet because of whatever purported hardship they are facing, or the Mafia coming to your place of business and asking you to pay for protection. Leave the gun (liberty), take the cannoli (largess).

But I digress. The bottom line is that the Census is being used to shamefully perpetuate the fallacy that government benevolence is the road to prosperity and justice. Nobody would like to hear the truth that if we really wanted to improve the General Welfare, we would scrap the whole welfare state and regulatory regime and free up the human spirit; that instead by shackling it, we create a permanent underclass. We discriminate against people on the basis of race and wealth with every intervention, and with it we undermine our economy and our values.

With the demoralization of the healthcare vote, I had hoped that the sacred March Madness would be a safe haven from Big Government. This was too much to ask, as to my chagrin the state had to defile another part of Americana with its cringe-worthy commercials. Has the government no shame? I suppose that question is rhetorical.