No census, no ballot, no freedom
German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) used history to trace the evolution of freedom. Starting with Asian masters in such viewpoints as Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, he traced the slow, ragged movement from master and slave to independence. He included intellectuals from Persia, Greece, and Rome to his present-day Prussia. The Reformation would lead to Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Reformation broke up feudalism while veering from science. The Enlightenment would steer it back to science. A main principle of Hegel: Morality is essential to a proper life. This imposes duties and responsibilities upon a person wishing true freedom.
Duty and responsibility include returning the census form. Article 1, Section 2 of the US Constitution states: “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States ... according to their respective Numbers ... . 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.” The “respective Numbers … several States” will be determined by “counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.” The United States Census Bureau is responsible for the process. The Bureau of the Census is part of the United States Department of Commerce. Note that “whole persons” would include immigrants, legal or otherwise. The Census determines our number of Representatives in the U.S. House and the distribution of Federal funds to the States.
My wife and I recently encountered a middle-aged woman who had neither returned her census nor voted in the primary. When I mentioned duties and responsibilities she sniffed “nobody’s gunna tell me what to do!”
Sounds like a no-mask corona denier. During two world wars and the Cold War the great majority of Americans followed the guidelines of behavior set out by the government. We are now at war with a virus and should do the same.
The Constitution grants us rights and privileges which can give us freedom when we meet the duties and responsibilities of an active civilian. Among these is exercising the right to vote. This may prove difficult this year, as Trumpublicans gerrymander districts, add more voter ID requirements, limit the number of polling stations, harass “the wrong” voters, slow the US Postal Service and cast misinformation.
More persistent readers know I am the offspring of immigrants. So too is Kamala Harris, Joe Biden’s choice as his VP running mate. Harris’ father is Donald Harris, of Jamaica, a Stanford economics professor who received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1960 at London University, and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of California. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan from India, was a cancer researcher at the Cancer Research Lab in the Department of Zoology at UC Berkeley and worked at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research for 16 years. She died in 2009 of colon cancer.
Harris was born in Oakland, California, in 1964 and graduated from Howard University and University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She began her career in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, worked in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and later the City Attorney of San Francisco’s office. In 2004, she was elected the 27th District Attorney of San Francisco, serving until 2011.
She was then elected Attorney General of California in 2010, and re-elected in 2014. On November 8, 2016, she succeeded Senator Barbara Boxer, becoming California’s third female U.S. Senator
She ran for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2020 election ending her campaign on December 3, 2019, citing lack of funds.
Register early. Mail early. Better yet, deliver your ballot to a drop-box. In Mt. Pleasant that is located on the second floor of the City Hall, 320 West Broadway, the Bordon Building. Make good trouble.