Census and Sensibility

Why be angry?

Today I received a letter from the U.S. Census Bureau demanding that I fill out the “American Community Survey.” I was to give information about myself, my housing situation, income, and employment to help the federal government distribute $675 billion to communities.

Not long ago I could have written a whole series of essays about how wrong this is. This requirement, which takes as much as 40 minutes of one’s time without compensation, is involuntary servitude. The inquiry into our personal lives goes beyond the intent of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.

My arguments could have gone in other directions as well. How Congressional corruption will ensure the money is wasted. How federal social spending helped create and deepen culture wars. How it’s actually more democratic for states to fund and build things themselves than to rely on federal funding and accompanying bureaucratic mandates.

Obviously, I was thinking all these things, but today I had no emotional attachments to the thoughts. I wasn’t angry. I followed instructions and filled out the survey.

Soon after completing it, I saw that Dave Grohl, frontman for the rock band Foo Fighters, was trending on Twitter. It was in connection with Westboro Baptist Church, the notorious anti-gay outfit in Kansas that often sends…