freedom Archive

2011: the 210th year of the Census, a ten-year initiative which helps account for the changing nature of British society. With the passing of both the official Census day of the 27th March and the ten day completion time-frame, it now seems inevitable that the Census Collectors will experience refusals of completion primarily for starkly political reasons of a libertarian orientation. This ideological standpoint is characterised by a rejection of state ‘intrusion’ in the private lives of both individual citizens and private businesses, believing instead that the government’s role is merely one of protecting individuals’ freedom from other individuals as well as ensuring businesses independent of direct government control ‘play by the rules’. However and perhaps ironically, the blanket libertarian distaste for ‘positive’ intrusion – one characterised by active control of business and direct state intervention in the lives of its citizens – appears ill-founded, as crucially the Census appears to in fact protect the ‘negative’ rights and freedoms of both individual citizens as well as private business.

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