ACTIVE Citizenship - What it Is and Why It Matters

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Victor Davis Hanson, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution where he focuses on classics and military history is also a third-generation grape farmer in Selma, California. That last part is probably what keeps him so grounded and clear about what is important and what isn't. He's always fascinating to listen to and to read. He currently has a new book out and is in connection with that has done a two-part interview with Jan Jekeilek on EpochTV.


The book is entitled: The Dying American Citizen" which outlines the causes, eventual effects, how to remedy it, and why it is imperative for all of us to involve ourselves in active citizenship. This is that perfect book that is aimed at the bystander believing that someone else should make the fight, the argument, stand up, and expose themselves to the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," so that bystanders can enjoy the government who governs at the consent of the governed. This brief article is a synopsis of the book and like the author of this article.


This book is written clearly and very briefly and has so many quotes that are succinct and pertinent, that it's hard not to quote them here, so guess what - that's exactly what I'm going to do over the next couple of weeks. I'm not a fast reader, particularly on something like this, that requires assimilation which I can't do and read at the same time.

So here's my first quote:

Citizenship...is not an entitlement, it requires work. Yet too many citizens of republics, ancient and modern, come to believe that they deserve rights without assuming responsibilities -- and they don't worry how or why or from whom they inherited their privileges.

The footnote for this reference is here.

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To many times we either forget or we failed to recognize the founding of our form of government. These founders worked hard to have a form of government that would last. For them, it was a given that they would all contribute to the government thereby making it a functional and plausible form of government. As a matter of fact, they preferred having to participate and comment on the government because they had worked so hard to make sure that they had that right to participate and comment.

In fact:

The citizen does not have to thank anyone for his rights. They are innate and properly his own.

No senator or president bestows anything on an American, because he is a servant, not a master, of the people. American citizens believe that they do not owe privileges such as freedom and consensual governance to any particular political party or Democratic or Republican leader. American Citizens, bearing natural and inalienable rights bestowed by a supreme deity, are accountable only to themselves .

Citizens differ from visitors, aliens, and residents passing through who are not rooted inside borders where a constitution and its laws reign supreme.

For citizenship to work, the vast majority of residents must be citizens.

Today, that honor and responsibility of participation is lost.

We must always ask ourselves whether as citizens we have earned what those who died at Shiloh or in the Meuse-Argone gave us.

Refusing to kneel during the national anthem or to salute the Stars and Stripes is not illegal, but it is not sustainable for the nation's privileged to sit in disgust for a flag that their betters raised under fire on Iwo Jima for others not yet born.

Sometimes citizens can do as much harm to their commonwealth by violating custom and tradition as by breaking laws.

And now we get to the meat of it:

• Do we really deserve the fine government we have inherited?
• Have we earned the right to enjoy the freedoms we have?
• Or is the direction our government is taking today what we deserve for how much we have given back to it?

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Why is voting important?

Why is voter integrity important?

Why is voter apathy something to deal with?

We all know the Declaration of Independence starts with "When in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary...." And we all know what the infamous wordsmith, Thomas Jefferson was writing - that a human has unalienable rights as bestowed by God, and those rights when violated by a leader, the rights of the people (given to them by God), should and shall break apart from their former leader (or form of government). Using such beautiful language, the founders of our country were very clear in how they broke away from the British Empire. This wasn't a temper tantrum or some rebel-rousing n'er-do-wells out looking to see what they could get away with. These were thoughtful, devout, God-center men who had tried in every way they could to obey their leader, but were consistently avoided and/or otherwise shunned and were even being threatened with further punishment for even voicing disagreement with their King.

The fabulous wordsmithing continues with the second paragraph:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

And in those short words:
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed - we get to the whole crux of the matter about voting, voting integrity, and voting participation. Without the consent of the governed, there is no Republic or government. So when Hanson quotes in his latest book, "The Dying Citizen"

A sign of democratic sclerosis is a loss of confidence in the integrity of voting -- to the point that it becomes seen as a futile exercise rather than a bulwark of citizenship.

How many times have we activists heard, "My vote doesn't count," or "Why should I vote?" These are all indications of that disease that causes restriction and eventual obstruction of any freedom and certainly any vote worth counting.

Again, citizenship came quite late to civilization. To appreciate what we Americans enjoy, we should pause to remember the long road from antiquity to our own Consitution.

At the very least, we should try to save that which not only took so long to make its appearance in history but marvel at its creation of it, to begin with.

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The United States of America could easily today say that the "Golden Age" of this country was during the 1950s and 1960s when the Middle Class was the power and base of the country. Before these two decades, this country underwent an expansion and was more concerned with covering this huge continent in government much less in forming any sort of cohesive society or class. During the Industrial Revolution, the country went through enormous growth in the upper class. The forming of such wealth dynasties as the Rockefellers, DuPonts, Mellons, Vanderbilts, and Posts. The Gilded Age was defined by American heiresses marrying penniless titled nobility of England. One of the more famous unions was that of Jenny Jerome to Lord Randolph Churchill, who heir managed to save Western Civilization.

After the two World Wars of the 20th Century, the middle class rose to prominence. The country rose in stature in the world and became a huge cause for democracy and self-governing. That may have been mutated into something not so grand as what it had originally been planned, but the hope was that the country if by no other reason than by existing by example, could cause change for good in the world.

Not surprisingly, the Greeks believe the middle class was also the strength of a country or in their case a city-state:

Aristotle envisions the middle class not just as morally superior to the elite but also as more stable and reliable than the poor. And a city-state governed by the middle classes is superior not just to oligarchies but also to tribal peoples, often nomadic and without permanent settlements, who define their political existence by precivilizational ties of blood and marriage

I totally agree. It is the middle class that understands the balance of human life. When a class of persons is working hard to maintain a business or land by keeping their heads about them the entire time of their life, they tend to be much more practical in every aspect of life. Whereas the elite tends to have too much time to get into trouble or think of excessiveness in almost any area of life, the middle class can not be consumed by those degenerative thoughts as they will soon fail, within a very short time. This keeps the middle class sane, and on a focused, clear path toward making a life that is not only good but can often be successful and most of all something of benefit to had to the next generation.

On top of the middle class is so fabulous, is in my case (as an older American) having been handed a free and fair world hardly fought with the blood and lives of many Americans as a gift to the future generations, who have the responsibility to pass on those same freedoms to their children. But without the citizen participation, there will be nothing but shambles to pass on.

For socialism kills everything. And it kills everything very rapidly, like unimpeded cancer.

There is a whole section in "The Dying Citizen" written by Hanson as almost homage to the middle-class after the Aristotle quote in Chapter 1.

According to Euripides, there are three classes of citizens:

There are three groups of People:
There are the rich who are never satisfied....
There are the poor who, because their daily bread is never enough, are dangerous....
And...there is a third. This one is between them. It's there to keep the order, it's there to keep the city safe.

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What is Tribalism?
Why is it so bad?
Why do we need to fear it?

Tribalism is that "us or them" mentality. It is that raison d'être that can break any form of government into chaos.

People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it. ~ Christopher Hitchens, The Perils of Identity Politics, Wall Street Journal, January 18, 2008

Well before the birth of the United States, a variety of Hellenic historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides, critiqued tribalism as precivilizational.
In his role as an anthropologist, the history Thucidies noted that before the city-state, tribal people were hopelessly nomadic and, without laws, could not become stationary.

The invention of politics and the rule of law initiated the slow and fragile ascent over the normal, natural state of tribalism. Ethnicities surrendered their primary identities and loyalties to a higher notion of transcendent ideas, bonds, and traditions.

I may be classified as White Caucasian, but I'm actually Irish, which is not a part of Europe. Therefore I resent being called Caucasian or Europoid and wish to have my own group with which I can identify and who can understand the injustices that have been ladened on me for so many centuries. I also want reparations for what is owed to me because it was taken away from my ancestors who suffered mightily for it. I wish for federal recognition of the Gaelic community and to take our due place in the leadership of this country. The white Caucasians should immediately cease and desist their hoarding of my due, and should additionally be punished for claiming that I'm among their group when this is clearly not the case.

So there!

I won't wait on one foot for this to happen, however, this is the whole idea behind tribalism and how devastating it can be. What about the Dutch, the Brits (who are also not Caucasian), the Slavs, the Near/Middle/Far Easterners, and what about Aussies that were punished by exportation from the UK? Good Grief, we could mention every group in the world...what about the Dutch-Germans, British Jews, French-Spanish, Austrian-Gauls, and on and on? What about the Jewish-Dutch-German-French, what about the Heinz 57? There is no end to the tribalism, as it implodes on itself.

Like so many precepts in the socialistic model, they all fail. They all fail every time. They all fail forevermore.

To be honest, I have Irish blood, but I count myself American, as American as every Jew, Franc, Gaul, Spaniard, and Slave that has come to this country legally.