Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutt
What kind of paranoia is that? What's wrong with a country's government knowing who is living in the country and who's a citizen? If people can hide from the government that means you can hide from paying taxes, you can hide from a military draft, you don't exist. I'm all for privacy but I don't consider the government knowing I exist as a threat to my privacy. When you DIE it is the law that a death certificate needs to be created. When you die your family can't keep it a secret and go bury you somewhere without informing some government authority.
Is it not a criminal offense to refuse to take part in the Census in the US? I think in Canada it is.
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Mutt, are you perhaps a Canadian? If so, that might explain your disconnect from the political culture of the United States. The founders of Canada, at least anglo-Canada, had a much higher respect for King and Crown, for power and institutions that the founders of the United States. They fought for the crown and against the American rebels. Fully one-third of those then living in the colonies that became the United States fled to Canada to be with those who saw eye to eye with them that the government was to be trusted. Two thirds remained here, very mistrustful of government, and establishing legal mechanisms to keep the power of government in check. Because they - and we - largely do not trust our government. We don't trust it inasmuch as it always abuses the power it has. Read the Declaration of Independence.
Americans have traditionally opposed national ID and a roster of citizens. In those countries where those things existed, they have often notoriously been abused by tyrants.
There are a whole series of laws though that get close to such a roster. All live births must be registered. Immigration, at least on paper, is tightly recorded. Every male must register for the draft at 18. It is a crime, as you note, to fail to answer the questions of the census taker, though there is no affirmative obligation to get counted if they miss you. And everyone earning income over a certain minimum limit must file an income tax return. But, so far as I know, there is no law that makes it mandatory to obtain a Social Security number. In my lifetime, it was something we tended to do when we got our first job. Now, there is financial pressure on parents to register their children at birth in order to get an income tax deduction for their support. The circle slowly tightens.
But no, it's not paranoia to distrust the government. Such distrust is actually the keystone of the American political tradition and it's completely impossible to understand the Constitution or its Bill of Rights without recognizing this. Read the Federalist Papers, the seminal explanation of the American system which was written to obtain support for the ratification of our constitution in the Eighteenth Century. These articles, easily found online, are often cited by the Supreme Court in interpreting the Constitution. Mistrust of the power of government is evident on every page. Do all Americans mistrust the government? No. There has been a serious failure in our educational system to teach kids our cultural cynicism about the power of cops and legislatures and courts and much harm has been done by teachers who think that good citizenship means to do what the cops want you to do.