Rights & Duties of a Citizen
/William Galston, one of the world’s leading scholars on citizenship and citizenship education, insists that the key to good citizenship is involvement. Being a good citizen isn’t about knowing history or reciting the Constitution, but about acting in a civic-minded way. Theodore Roosevelt said anyone who doesn’t get involved in politics and their community isn’t fit to live in America. Galston would agree.
But what are the duties of the citizen?
Most natural-born citizens of the US never receive any instruction in citizenship. The only people who do are immigrants seeking to become citizens. And so the best resource for the rights and duties of a citizen is found at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Here are the duties USCIS teaches:
Support and defend the Constitution.
Stay informed of the issues affecting your community.
Participate in the democratic process.
Respect and obey federal, state, and local laws.
Respect the rights, beliefs, and opinions of others.
Participate in your local community.
Pay income and other taxes honestly, and on time, to federal, state, and local authorities.
Serve on a jury when called upon.
Defend the country if the need should arise.
A search on the internet for “rights and duties of a citizen” turns up the same USCIS list over and over again. Look here and here.
The list seems simple enough, until you consider each duty more carefully. What exactly does one have to do to “Support and defend the Constitution.” The Constitution is not under any serious threat. An ordinary citizen rarely has occasion to “defend the Constitution” in any meaningful way.
How does one respect “the rights, beliefs, and opinions of others?” We all know some highly partisan public officials who don’t respect their political opponents’ opinions. And if members of the US Congress and occupants of the White House violate this requirement, how should ordinary citizens abide by it?
A more thorough search for “rights and duties of a citizen” eventually turns up a few fresh takes on the subject. But few of them are thorough. The American Bar Association‘s answer to the question gets off to a bad start by asking, “What rights and liberties should the state grant its people?”
The founding fathers believed that freedom of religion, speech, assembly and the rest were natural rights that already belonged to the people. The founders avoided any language implying that government creates or awards rights to the people. The Constitution prohibits Congress from interfering with citizens’ rights that pre-exist the government. The Bar Association’s commentary on the rights and duties of a citizen struggles on for several hundred words and finally concludes that people should maybe, like, vote and stuff. Nothing new there.
One surprisingly good treatment of the “rights and duties” question is found on a website called, The Art of Manliness. It is a hobby website that encourages men to shave with a straight razor, change their own oil, stay fit, and generally to be competent and vigorous. The author of the article on citizenship, who, in manly fashion, co-edits the site with a wife he respects, said:
I found there were few modern resources on the subject of good citizenship. Civics, while it would seem to be an integral part of every person’s education, seems to be something we’re just supposed to pick up somehow as we get older. Unfortunately, that doesn’t often happen, and as a result, most people have a view of citizenship that’s just as hazy as mine — or more accurately, just as incomplete.
His research led to a Boy Scout manual from 1953. The manual offers genuinely good insights, which the editor relates in detail, explaining that every right is paired with a duty.
The right to a fair trial pairs with the responsibility to serve willingly on a jury when called.
The right to free (and/or government supported) schooling pairs with the responsibility to take full advantage of one’s educational opportunities.
The right to protection of life and liberty pairs with the responsibility to stay ready to defend that right and the willingness to serve when called.
The right to enjoy natural resources pairs with the responsibility to preserve and conserve public parks and lands.
The right to welfare assistance pairs with the responsibility to be as self-supporting as possible and to ask for public assistance only when you really need it.
The right to use public libraries, roads, transportation, parks, police/fire services, etc. pairs with the responsibility to pay the taxes that support such services.
The right to free speech and protest pairs with the responsibility to offer informed opinions and constructive criticism, and to uphold the free speech of others.
The right to equality under the law pairs with the responsibility to stand for equal rights and opportunities for others.
The right to bear arms pairs with the responsibility to train yourself in the safe and effective use of your firearm.
The right to vote pairs with the responsibility to be informed about candidates, issues, and parties.
The right of all to freely publish anything short of sedition and slander means each citizen has a responsibility to examine published information for accuracy and trustworthiness.
The right to happiness combines with the responsibility to contribute to that happiness by living virtuously.
The right to effective, intelligent, just representation by elected officials hinges on the responsibility to be an active, engaged, informed citizen.
Next, I found good information from the Smithsonian Institution, America’s wonderful national collection of historical and cultural treasures. The Smithsonian, like the Boy Scout manual, balanced rights and duties.
The strongest, boldest, most challengingly vigorous, or most vigorously challenging and, above all, most utterly uncompromising treatment of citizenship arises in a speech delivered by Theodore Roosevelt in 1883. You can read it all here. If, like Roosevelt, you are just too busy hunting elephants, digging canals across entire continents, and dragging the 19th Century into the 20th Century to read the speech, here are a couple of excerpts:
The first duty of an American citizen, then, is that he shall work in politics; his second duty is that he shall do that work in a practical manner; and his third is that it shall be done in accord with the highest principles of honor and justice.
No man can be a good citizen who is not a good husband and a good father, who is not honest in his dealings with other men and women, faithful to his friends and fearless in the presence of his foes, who has not got a sound heart, a sound mind, and a sound body
Roosevelt’s speech is a great treatment of the question, and the Boy Scout manual is detailed and well thought out. The other lists, including the government-issued one, are not very satisfactory.
The Congenial Iconoclast offers an expanded set of rights and privileges of a citizen in another essay. Go there and read it.
Think:
Are the duties listed by the USCIS meaningful? Do you fulfill them yourself?
Is it reasonable to require citizens to “Respect the rights, beliefs, and opinions of others?”
What do you make of Roosevelt’s insistence that the first duty of the citizen is to “work in politics?”
