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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.
Anything you say may and will be used against you. some where, some place, of their choosing.
This story is just another hoax! Never had a thread of truth in it! The originator deleted the story from their website and the LDS church says it is a hoax too.
You may have confused the oath keepers and a church warehouse with this door to door story. the oathkeepers took down their report because it was not recorder so no longer proof. wereas the door to door is archieved to read in nashvilles area news reports. see also Http://PureMormonism.blogspot.com for more explanations and insights and which story was discredited. hope you find this helpful. plus, there is a difference between a hoax, and denial not the same thing. like when pres clinton said he never once had sex with that woman, he implied numerous times, just not once. or did he??? the magic of word smiths.
It seems to me, anyone stocking food these days would KNOW not to even give these guys a foothold, much less even open the door.
I greatly suspect anything that the Government wants to know about me or my life style any more.Big Brother is already to big on violations of the private rights of people. This Home Land Security thing is already going to far in some areas,and government officials are way to indifferent to what we as citizens have to say. Bush went to far giving to much power to a agency that answers to no one it wants to answer to. OBama is no better, maybe worst.
I enjoyed reading the above article on “some people have bad manners” If the article is factual then you then you are commended for making people aware of these events that are occuring whereever in the continental U.S. So I would ask you for any other events that you are privy to, too include them on your webpage as a blog.There are strange things happening a lot with authorities,police,etc.and innocent people get hurt by their so called right to do them.I also commend you for your food sevice.It’s I’m sure a service people will come to depend on. I have yet to try your products but I know at some point I will. Thank you for the print up.
Ann,
You have your facts confused if you think this story was a hoax or that News Channel Five has disavowed their reporting of it. News Channel Five confirmed the story on December 11, as did several homeowners who had been subjects of the questioning.
The story you are probably thinking of is the report that federal agents attempted to interrogate a Mormon cannery in Tennesee, asking to see records of clients. Rock has addressed that topic on his regular blog which is directed at Mormon concerns. Again, he suspects there is more to the story than what has been given.
http://puremormonism.blogspot.com/2011/12/mystery-at-old-cannery.html
Ann,
I welcome anyone correcting me when I am in error, but you insult my integrity and do a disservice to my readers by coming on here and declaring this story a hoax and falsely asserting that the originator has removed the story from its website.
A simple visit to the website of News Channel Five would have shown you that the video is still up, reported on by Janet Kim in front of the Lentz Public Health Center in West Nashville. I can find no mention anywhere that the story has ever been disavowed or subsequently labeled a hoax, certainly not by the source. A Google search attempting to learn if the story has ever been disputed results only in numerous hits showing that the story has been confirmed. News Channel Five has neither disavowed the story nor removed it from their site.
It is curious that you would declare in your comment above that the LDS Church says this story is a hoax too, since nowhere in News Channel Five’s piece, nor my reporting on it, is the LDS Church mentioned. What in heaven’s name would the LDS Church have to say about a story about government interrogators going house to house in Nashville, Tennessee?
Is it possible you are confusing this story with the controversy over the accusation of federal agents showing up at a Mormon cannery and asking for customer records? If so, I would suggest that in the future you focus a bit more carefully on what it is you are reading.
There is room for differences of opinion in the cannery incident, as the original witness has recanted, but that story has little to do with this one. I have discussed my reasons for favoring the original report over the subsequent denials of the Church representative over at my personal blog, Pure Mormonism, and you are welcome to offer an alternative viewpoint on that particular story there if you wish.
But again, that is a different story posted on a completely different forum. What you have done here is effectively call me a liar for citing a source that no one disputes but you. If there is a hoax being perpetrated about this incident, the instigator is you, Ann.