https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/02/13/like-a-fire-bell-in-the-night/feed/PJ Media is a leading news site covering culture, politics, faith, homeland security, and more. Our reporters and columnists provide original, in-depth analysis from a variety of perspectives.en-usWed, 10 Jun 2026 02:14:25 -0400<![CDATA[Byron York describes the current battle over who controls the Census Bureau. Counting constituencies is one of the most sensitive undertakings in a political system. For centuries, and not just in the US, the question of how many belong what sides of the political fence has been key to determining legitimacy. In Lebanon&#8217;s confessional society, for example, there hasn&#8217;t been a census taken since 1932. In US history, the Missouri Compromise created an uneasy balance between free and slave states, but the balance did not survive as everyone knows.  Once a zero-sum game had been set up, it was only a matter of time before a winner-take-all showdown emerged. As the nation expanded, the Compromise began to fail as the balance between slave and free states threatened to tip decisively in one direction or the other. The aged Thomas Jefferson, writing in 1820 to John Holmes Monticello forsaw the weakness in the Compromise, with all the political balance of terror that it implied and knew that it threatened the Union as nothing else.]]>Fri, 13 Feb 2009 03:44:54 -0500<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2009/02/13/like-a-fire-bell-in-the-night-n187261