The gathering of data exemplifies our ambition for a stable, coherent society. The United States is an Enlightenment project based on the supremacy of reason; on the idea that things can be empirically tested; that there are self-evident truths; that liberty, progress and constitutional government walk arm in arm and together form the recipe for the ideal state. Statistics—numbers created by the state to help it understand itself and ultimately to govern itself—are not some side effect of that project but a central part of what government is and does.
