Franke: The Role of Citizenship
The Role of Citizenship
by Mark Franke
What is a citizen? What defines citizenship? Is it a set of rights and privileges? Or is it a set of duties and obligations? Or perhaps some of both?
More philosophically, is citizenship something bestowed by the government or does it inhere naturally within those who reside under the jurisdiction of a democratic government?
The on-going contretemps over birthright citizenship as defined in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is an opportunity for civil discourse on these questions. Unfortunately like nearly every other political issue these days, the birthright debate generates more heat than light.
My monthly Socratic discussion group took on the questions asked above. We quickly determined that the only antidote to government usurpation of personal liberty was an informed and engaged citizenry.
But what constitutes an engaged and informed citizenry? This took us to an examination of citizenship as a duty or a privilege or both.
Consider this question: Does American citizenship give one the right to vote or the duty to vote? We all know people who don’t vote because they don’t think it matters. After all, what is one vote in the greater scheme of things?
One of our members, a former elected public official, offered a scenario he uses with high school classes when he is invited to speak about government. In the last Fort Wayne primary election for mayor, only ten percent of eligible voters went to the polls. Using this metric, he asked a class of 50 students if they were OK with only five of their number setting the agenda.
That meant that a simple majority of three students were in charge of all 50. In other words one activist student and two buddies could put themselves in charge. Is this democracy at work or does it look more like one of the various forms of autocracy?
In his scenario if just one more student voted, it would take four to claim ruling power. If three more voted, the majority requirement increases to five. And so on until a critical mass of all students must be met by the putative ruling group.
So the answer appears to be clear: Get more citizens to vote. But what if those additional voters are woefully uniformed and unwilling to put in the effort to educate themselves? Doesn’t this just increase the influence of special interests and their obnoxious, negative advertising?
Even with two hours of structured discussion, my group could not agree upon the relative importance between duty and privilege in democratic citizenship. We all agreed that it is a duty of citizenship at its most elemental level to vote, but voting requires educated voters. And thus we ended right back at our starting point.
Should someone be given the opportunity to opt out of citizenship, to rephrase the question? Can a political system work if there are levels of citizenship? Is it fair to expect a minority of residents to accept responsibility for governance while the majority simply line up to receive the benefits? Can a democracy survive that arrangement or will it simply morph into an autocracy?
The Constitution is surprisingly quiet about the role of citizens. It speaks indirectly to citizenship in its preamble. Try parsing that long sentence this way:
We, the people, form this more perfect union in order to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare so that we can secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.
This sounds like a proto-definition of citizenship, at least the duties incumbent on the citizenry.
Perhaps citizenship is an intangible concept that remains partially undefined so that it can adapt to meet future needs of the polity. That may be the foundation of democratic governance—flexibility to meet new and unforeseen challenges. But is this naïve thinking?
My group certainly is not alone in fearing that our democracy is moving dangerously close to a crisis. It’s not the first time in our history that a lack of citizen involvement threatened the nation. During one of the darkest moments in our War for Independence, Thomas Paine wrote this exhortation in his pamphlet entitled “The Crisis”:
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”
Paine had it right; democracy is hard work. But it is worth it.
Mark Franke, M.B.A., an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review and its book reviewer, is formerly an associate vice-chancellor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.
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