March 7th, come at last. National census day.

And why are New Zealand's true patriots kicking up a fuss about that?

In Christchurch, Wellington, and in Northland libertarians are shredding or fire-breathing or BBQing their census forms, each after their own regional appetite! The same civil disobedience will be carried out nation-wide by many other libertarians. Are these people mad?

Yes! Mad about liberty though, that's all. And if you're not why not? Kiwis who see their liberty stolen away and quietly cooperate are not patriots, they're traitors! It can't be that everyone who bends to the census is a traitor, so it must be they don't see what's happening here and need to have it explained.
Protection of people and their property is the name of the game. It is a principle of law that our rights belong to us and not to those whose greedy hands can take them away. Everybody knows that (although we may argue about what those rights are).

Government and law are the organisation of that principle. Government is a desirable thing and if it would just stick to this, its business, then peace and order would be all we'd ever know.

A nation run like that would be so simple, tidy, quiet and non-oppressive. We'd have the most just and trasparent government anybody could ever think up. And nobody would have any political favours to quarrel over anymore because there would be no privilages avaliable to co-opt.

Unfortunately for New Zealand we have given ourselves a government that does things the other way around.

Census day comes around every five years, and every five years all the libertarians in the country refuse to cooperate for the above reasons. The reasons come to two main points that strike me above all others.

1. Families and households are forced into being tax collectors and accomplaces to beurocracy. The Government makes us help them farm us, makes us assist them in perfecting their plans for greedy hands to finger people and property that they have no right to touch. Libertarians refuse to cooperate with or be a part of this undertaking.

2. They're not asking, they're ordering. Even libertarians, who are jellous of their liberty, would lend a hand or an answer to anybody who needed one. But the character of assistance to others is completely transformed when it changes from being a freely chosen voluntary offering into a contribution you are ordered to follow so no harm will come to you. We libertarians, we don't take well to ultimatums like that either.

"I am not a number, I am a free man! I will not be stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own! -- Patrick McGoohan, The Prisoner

NumeroNazis have their day today, sticking their skewers through every Kiwi they can in order to make a huge national abacus out of us all. And they would have completely gotten away with it too if it weren't for those darn libertarians.