Here’s a topic I haven’t followed well enough, as became obvious to me when I saw this little gem of a video on Huffpo. [1] I had NO IDEA that one of the reasons Those-Who-Hate-Government-But-Want-Government-to-Manage-Religion-and-Reproduction are threatening not to fill out their census forms is the fear of being placed in Internment Camps. Yep, that maven of legislative insight, Michele Bachmann, warns Glenn Beck of the dire consequences we may well repeat from the WWII era. She also laments the missing “are you here illegally?” question (because of course all undocumented workers would ‘fess right up to that on an official government form). My guess is that if that question were to be included, she would laud the potential camps as a place to put those illegal aliens after we sorted the Census forms into the “citizen,” “legal non-citizen” and “scum of the earth” piles and then rounded ’em all up for deportation.
I find it impossible to understand how this woman was actually elected by actual human voters. Even Glenn Beck, one of the most unrealistic commentators out there, seems baffled by her statements – and I’m thinking that for a Republican, that’s hard to accomplish.
Take a look at the Census notebook given to members of Congress [2], containing the proposed Census questions and the justifications for asking them. Note that two versions are included; the longer version will be distributed to a much smaller, but hopefully representational, portion of the population.
So here’s my question, DI readers. How do you feel about a 25+-page census form? Does the government need our phone numbers? Should we be concerned that we are expected to turn over so much information about ourselves? Why would you oppose sharing this information? I’m guessing that if one opposes government involvement in our lives, one believes said government does not need demographic information on which to base programs, taxes, etc. What else? Just trying to parse through the pros and cons, and am interested in hearing some intelligent thoughts on the matter.
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