Jake Brock
October 8, 2012
MOI
Dr. Strickler
First Critical Thought Paper
Multiple words in the English dictionary get seen as words in which people may all have
different definitions for. Citizenship is one of those words. Each person may have their own
version of what citizenship means. And more specifically each person may have their own ideas
of what the duties of a citizen involve. I feel some of these duties include favoring the interest
among citizens over foreigners, arguing for the social rights of future generations, voting, and
thinking of military service as an unconditioned, mandatory national duty. All of these duties are
shown in the texts we have read in class. These texts include Eboo Patel’s Acts of Faith, Ray
Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and John Varley’s Persistence of Vision.
According to Seth Lazar a duty of being a citizen includes favoring the interest among
citizens over foreigners. Varley shows this in Persistence of Vision when the narrator in the story
basically goes in a trial after he left a bucket on the pathway and got a citizen hurt. The jury
could of easily got the narrator kicked out of the community for this however they listened to the
citizen who got hurt and she said give him a chance to stay here. The narrator did not get to
defend his case they did not listen to him. He was a foreigner, and they listened to the girl who
got hurt, because she was a citizen. This gives a clear example of them favoring the interest of
the citizen over the foreigner, although their interests were the same they did not even ask the
foreigner before asking the citizen. However you can indeed look at this from the flip side to
this idea of a duty. According to Lazar some people believe “There is little reason to treat
compatriots any differently from how we treat foreigners.” By this people mean that we should
not treat someone different just because they do not have citizenship of your community. If they
have an idea or interest we should listen and respect them just as much as our own citizen. This
contrary idea can also show in Varley’s Persistence of Vision when Pink and the rest of her
community let the narrator into their community even though he is not a citizen. They respect
his interest in their lifestyle and him wanting to contribute by giving him things to do. This
shows that they do care about the interest of foreigners by allowing him to do things he wants to
do in the community.
Another duty of a citizen according to Maurice Roche involves arguing for the social
rights of future generations. In Roche’s book called Rethinking Citizenship: Welfare, Ideology,
and Change in Modern Society, he discusses that he believes people should think of how their
decisions effect future generations. He involves this as a duty of a citizen. If you do not look out
after future generations then you cannot consider yourself a good citizen. You actually may just
consider yourself of being selfish, and being selfish does not include what he believes of an
attribute of being a good citizen. In a way Eboo Patel’s text Acts of Faith shows this. For
example Patel said “I will do everything in my power to become an effective teacher here.”
(Patel, P. 62) Patel’s referring to a school in which he would teach high school drop outs in
order to help them pass their GED exam. This shows that Patel looks out for future generations.
By helping educate more of the youth he makes the future generation more educated overall.
This will help get more people working and more bright minds out there to look for their own
social rights. Patel has a very good education and people consider him a smart man, he could
have done many things at that point of his life including make a lot of money. But he decided to
take this low income job in order to help the youth get more educated. The sacrifice he made
shows how Patel became a good citizen and acted upon his duties of being a citizen. He
especially acted upon the duty of arguing for the social rights of future generations. However
people can still think of a potential downfall to this duty. The downfall people think of says that
if you spend too much time worrying about future generations then you do not worry enough
about your own current generation and community. And this could hurt your community at that
given time.
A third duty of a citizen involves simply voting. Michael Schudson brings this up in his
book called The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life. In the book he says that
everyone should vote. Because in order to get the full understanding of what the citizens want
you need them all to express their opinion and the only way to do that is to have them all vote.
Without doing so you will not become a good citizen and could potentially get the wrong person
in office who could then easily hurt your community. In Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451,
a person could easily assume that in order for that community to get changed so much in what
most consider a bad way, that somewhere along the lines someone bad got elected. And you
could also assume that during that election some people who if forced to vote would have voted
for the other guy. Since they were not doing the duty of voting then they were all hurt because
the wrong man got elected and changed their community for the worse. However some people
may feel that not everyone should vote. That some people just simply don’t know enough about
the candidates and if they were to vote that they would make mistakes. That this too could get
the wrong person elected. That is just one consequence of forcing everyone to vote.
The fourth major duty of a citizen wants you to consider military service as an
unconditioned, mandatory national duty. According to the article From "Obligatory Militarism"
to "Contractual Militarism"--Competing Models of Citizenship written by Yagil Levy, Edna
Lomsky-Feder, and Noa Harel, they consider military as a national duty. This belief says that to
act as a good citizen you have to become ready to fight if your country goes to war. It is your
duty to protect your country and you should have the willingness to risk your life for it. In Ray
Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 he has a military war going on throughout the whole book. This war
has citizens fighting in it. These citizens more than likely have volunteered to fight for their
community during this time of war. They took it upon themselves to make it their duty to risk
their lives for the better good, what Levy, Lomsky-Feder, and Harel would consider an act of a
good citizen. Although in Bradbury’s novel, not all citizens fight in the war. If it ever came
about that a government made a law saying that all citizens had to fight in a war it would cause
many problems. For one there may be people forced to fight who just cannot physically or
mentally fight in a war. Secondly you need people in the community still to keep things running
smooth. Either way if the government needed everyone it would make you a good citizen to
consider the act of fighting in a war as a duty. Therefore you do not question it when you get
called to action.
Citizenship still gets defined differently by everyone. Although most people would agree
that being a citizen comes with certain duties. And even though everyone may have different
ideas on what those duties involve, some may look similar. Some may include favoring the
interest among citizens over foreigners, arguing for the social rights of future generations, voting,
and thinking of military service as an unconditioned, mandatory national duty. These duties get
seen in multiple spots in our class material such as Acts of Faith, Fahrenheit 451, and
Persistence of Vision. However these duties don’t change the fact that everyone has their own
definition of citizenship. Work Cited
Lazar, Seth. "A Liberal Defence Of (Some) Duties To Compatriots." Journal Of Applied
Philosophy 27.3 (2010): 246-257. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Oct. 2012.
Levy, Yagil, Edna Lomsky-Feder, and Noa Harel. "From "Obligatory Militarism" To
"Contractual Militarism"--Competing Models Of Citizenship." Israel Studies 12.1 (2007):
127-148. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Oct. 2012.
Roche, Maurice. England 1992: Rethinking Citizenship: Welfare, Ideology, and Change in
Modern Society. Oxford, Policy Press 1992.
Schudson, Michael. New York 1998: The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life.
Martin Kessler Books 1998.