Reports coming out of Tennessee last month reveal government health officials conducting door-to-door “assessments,” interrogating residents on how much food and emergency supplies they may have stored away.
According to Nashville’s News Channel Five, this assessment is being conducted to encourage residents of Davidson county to be prepared in the event of an emergency, but that claim doesn’t wash with me. In light of Senator Rand Paul’s recent disclosure that the Justice Department characterizes citizens who have more than seven day’s worth of food on hand as potential terror suspects, any bureaucrat showing up at my door with a pen and a clipboard and a list of questions is highly suspect themselves.
If the purpose of the program is to encourage people to stock up on food and emergency supplies, why don’t they simply do that? Why don’t they merely go door to door advising citizens on the wisdom of being prepared for an emergency? That would at least be a public service.
But these assessment officers are not acting as counselors, they’re acting as interrogators. They are presenting homeowners with a list of 22 questions they expect answered, and they are writing those answers down to take back to the office, complete with names, addresses, and details of the conversation.
You wouldn’t freely give a list of your possessions to nosy Mrs. Kravitz across the street, so why spill your guts to a stranger on your porch? Just as the government wants to know how many guns every citizen owns, now it wants to know how much food they have, too.
In the words of Patrick Henry, I smell a rat.
When government snoops come around prying into your private life, you have every right to politely tell them to take a hike. Sadly, few citizens assert themselves, trained as they are from childhood to respond obsequiously to those who present themselves as government officials.
The greatest disservice your parents ever did was to teach you to respect authority. The founding fathers questioned governmental authority, and so should you.
The fourth and fifth amendments were included in the Bill of Rights to guard against petty tyrants coming around to patronizingly “help” you out. Human nature being what it is, the founders recognized that whenever some persons get a little authority, they often exercise unrighteous dominion over others. The entire purpose of the Constitution was to place human nature in check.
Do government employees have the right to ask you personal questions about your lifestyle? Yes they do. So does Mrs. Kravitz. It’s a free country. Anyone has the right to ask as many questions as they want.
But you have no obligation to answer.
If anyone comes to your home with the intent of prying information from you, it doesn’t matter who they are, what their job title is, or even if they flash a badge. The only duty you have is to politely close the door.
Don’t worry about appearing rude. By asking you to divulge private details about your personal life, they are the ones demonstrating poor manners.
