|
The Census and Despotism
Lew Rockwell
Campaign
For Liberty
Monday, February 8th, 2010
"There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus," says
St. Luke on why Mary and Joseph found themselves in Bethlehem,
"that all the world should be taxed." Joseph had to
go to his own city because the tyrannical Roman government was
conducting a census. But the information may have been used
for more than just taxation. The Roman government's local ruler
later decided he wanted to find the Christ child and kill Him.
Did the government make use of census data to find out where
the members of the House of David were? We can't know for sure,
although a later Roman despot did. But we can know that Joseph
made a huge error in obeying the census takers in the first
place. They were up to no good. In fact, another group of religious
Jews in Judea decided that they would not comply with the Roman
government's demand to count and tax them. The group was known
as the "Zealots" (yes, that's where the word came
from). They saw complying with the census as equivalent to submitting
to slavery. Many ended up paying for their principled stand
with their lives.
And yet, their resistance arguably made would-be tyrants more
cautious. For 10 centuries after Constantine, when feudal Europe
was broken up into thousands of tiny principalities and jurisdictions,
no central government was in a position to collect data on its
citizens. This is one of the many great merits of radically
decentralized political systems: There is no central power that
controls the population through data gathering and population
enumeration.
The only exception in Europe in those years was William the
Conqueror who, after 1066, attempted to establish in England
a centralized and authoritarian society on the Roman model.
That meant, in the first instance, a census. The census was
compiled in The Doomesday Book, so named by an Anglo-Saxon monk
because it represented the end of the world for English freedom.
A predecessor to today's tax rolls, it functioned as a hit
list for the conquering state to divide property up as it wished.
"There was no single hide nor yard of land," read
a contemporary account, "nor indeed one ax nor one cow
nor one pig was there left out, and not put down on the record."
Eventually the attempt to keep track of the population for purposes
of taxes led to the Magna Carta, the foundational statement
of limits on the state's power.
 The Doomesday Book established the precedent for many
other attempts at compiling information. But according to Martin
Van Creveld (author of The Rise and Decline of the State, 1999),
the information-gathering techniques of these times were so
primitive, and the governments so decentralized, that the data
were largely useless. On the Continent, for example, no government
was in the position of demanding a comprehensive census. That
began to change in the 16th century, when the nation-state began
to gain a foothold against the countervailing power of the church,
free cities and local lords. In France, the first modern philosopher
of the state, John Bodin, urged that a census be taken to better
control the people.
Also in France, writes Voltaire, Louis XIV tried but failed
to develop a comprehensive accounting of "the number of
inhabitants in each district -- nobles, citizens, farm workers,
artisans and workmen -- together with livestock of all kinds,
land of various degrees of fertility, the whole of the regular
and secular clergy, their revenues, those of the towns and those
of the communities." It turned out that this was just a
utopian fantasy. Even if the Sun King could have devised the
form, it would have been impossible to force people to surrender
all that information.
The first censuses of the 18th century were taken in Iceland
and Sweden using depopulation as an excuse. But America after
the revolution of 1776 faced no such problem, and the generation
that complained of British tax agents knew better than to invest
government with the power to collect information on citizens.
In the Articles of the Confederation, drafted in the days of
full revolutionary liberty, each state had one vote, no matter
how many representatives it sent to Congress. There was no demand
for a census because the central government, such as it was,
had no power to do much at all.
It was with the U.S. Constitution in 1787 that the real troubles
began. The document permitted more powers to the federal government
than any free person should tolerate (as Patrick Henry argued),
and the inclusion of a census was evidence of the problem. The
framers added the demand for a census in the interests of fully
representing the people in the legislature, they said. They
would have two legislative houses, one representing the states
and the other the people in the states. For the latter, they
would need a head count. Hence, the government would count heads
every 10 years.
Why else was a head count needed? Article I, Section 2, included
an ominous mention of taxes, recalling not only Caesar Augustus
but the whole tyrannical history of using the census to control
people: "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned
among the several States which may be included within this Union,
according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined
by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those
bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians
not taxed, three-fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration
shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of
the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent
Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct."
The 1790 census seemed innocent enough, but by 1810, matters
already were out of control: For the first time, the government
started demanding information on occupations. Fortunately for
the American people, the records were burned by the British
in 1813, leaving hardly a trace for the state to use to expand
its power. And yet, the state would not be held back, and the
census became ever more intrusive.
The lesson of the history of the U.S. census is this: Any power
ceded to a government will be abused, given time. Today, the
long-form of the census asks for details of your life that you
would never tell a neighbor or a private business. A total of
52 questions, some outrageously intrusive, appear on it.
Every census is worse than the last. The 1990 census asked
for the year of your birth, but the 2000 census wants to know
the day and the month, not to mention the race and relation
of every person in the house, along with the number of toilets
and much more. And what is this information used for? Mostly
for social and economic central planning -- an activity the
government shouldn't be engaged in at all.
This isn't a biased rendering of the objectives of the census.
The Census Bureau itself says, "Information collected in
Census 2000 will provide local area data needed for communities
to receive federal program funds and for private sector and
community planning." You only have to ask yourself what
any 18th- or 19th-century liberal would have thought of the
idea of "private-sector" and community planning undertaken
by the central state.
Indeed, very few Americans trust their government enough to
allow it to engage in planning. Consider the incompetent Census
Bureau itself. The letters it sent out in advance of the forms
put an extra digit in front of the addresses, as the head of
the bureau admitted in a Feb. 26 press release, while trying
to blame it on someone else. And these are the people we are
supposed to trust to gather information on us to plan our lives?
No thanks.
The letter from the government says, "Census counts are
used to distribute government funds to communities and states
for highways, schools, health facilities and many other programs
you and your neighbors need." In short, the purpose is
no different from that of William the Conqueror's: to redistribute
property and exercise power. Clearly, we've come a long way
from the head-counting function of the census. Moreover, there
are quite a few of us out here who don't believe that we "need"
these programs.
What's worse, the point of the original census was not to apportion
a fixed number of House members among the states. It was rationally
to expand the number of people serving in the House as the population
grew. But after the Civil War, the number of House members stopped
growing, so there's not much point to the census at all now
-- or at least no purpose consistent with liberty.
Moreover, if a head count were all that was needed, the job
could be done by using data from private companies or the U.S.
Postal Service. But the census wants more than that. Why? Forget
all the official rationales. The real reason the government
wants the information is to control the population. The promises
that the data won't be used at your expense is worth the same
as all government promises: zippo.
What is a freeman supposed to do when he receives the form
in the mail? First, remember that information is the foundational
infrastructure of the would-be total state. Without it, the
state is at a loss. And then consider whether the costs associated
with noncompliance are outweighed by the subjective benefit
one receives from joining with all free people in resisting
the government's data-collection efforts. Finally, consider
the limited purposes for which the Framers sought to use the
census, and ask yourself whether the central government of today
really can be trusted with knowing what is better kept to yourself.
For many years, voluntary compliance has been falling. In anticipation
of this problem, the Census Bureau has been relying on wholly
owned sectors of society to propagandize for its campaign. The
Sesame Street character named Count von Count is touring public
schools to tell the kids to tell their parents to fill out the
census, even as more than 1 million census kits have been sent
to public schools around the country. Think of it as the state
using children to manipulate their parents into becoming volunteers
in the civic planning project.
It is a bullish sign for liberty that the government only achieved
65 percent mail-in compliance in 1990. And given the decline
in respect for government that characterizes the Clinton era,
you can bet it will be even lower today. If you do choose to
fill out the census, some commentators have recommended you
adhere strictly to the Constitution and admit only how many
people live in your household. That such a tactic is considered
subversive indicates just how far we've come from 18th-century
standards of intrusion.
In 1941, Gustav Richter, an aide to Adolf Eichmann, was sent
to Romania to gather information about the Jewish population
in a census, with the ultimate goal of plotting a mass deportation
to the Belzec concentration camp. But Romania cut off all political
relations with the Nazis and, as a result, the Jewish population
was spared the fate of Jews in Poland and Austria. Just as the
Zealots of the first century knew, when a government seeks information
on people, it is up to no good.
There went out a decree from Clinton Augustus that all the
country should fill out the census. But think of this: If Joseph
had known what was in store for him, he might have thought twice
about taking that long trek to Bethlehem just because the government
told him so.
"When the people find they can vote themselves
money, that will herald the end of the republic."
- Fall Of The Republic - Buy
the DVD here
|
INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
|
|
