On Citizenship

I don’t know about you, but with some unease I have long been aware of the word that government agencies, organizations and corporations use when they refer to us, the people. They call us consumers, not citizens. This is not complimentary because consumers “use up;” they do not give back, and this becomes a real problem when people simply take but do not return. The equation becomes very lop-sided and sooner or later becomes perilously out of balance.

Citizens, not subjects...

In a democratic country its people are citizens; in totalitarian countries its people are subjects. While the citizen has something to say about what goes on in his country, the subject does not, being simply an “item” of the state. Citizenship is a funny thing, though. Unminded, unwatched, it can slip away to others to mind and watch for us. Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s “Iron Lady,” once said in a political speech that “it is very easy to give our power away and very hard to get it back,” and this goes farther afield than just politics.

A state of mind...

Citizenship is actually more than just the status of our statehood; it is a state of mind, and it can be said that many naturalized and non-citizens value this land more than some born on these shores. We sometimes take for granted a freedom that many across the world do not have. Maybe this is why we love and remember John F. Kennedy’s glowing statement said in his 1961 Inaugural Address: “Ask not what you country can do for you; ask what you can do for our country.” Perhaps we could think again what the “land of the free and the home of the brave” really means.

An imperfect thing...

A democracy is an imperfect thing. It’s like a child in many ways. It needs attention; it’s messy; it’s always growing up, and it can go off track if not tended to. Since as citizens we do not always do the right thing by one another, we make laws to help us remember what is ours to do and, by the same token, what is not ours to do because it ultimately means everything to live in a land of self-imposed laws, not in a strangling dictatorship.


We’ve got elections coming up soon. Let’s think seriously about them and mind the store.

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