What does good citizenship mean to you?

[snarkyman]

Please consider the following questions in terms of your country of citizenship.

What does it mean to be a good citizen?

Do you consider yourself to be a good citizen?

Is it important to you to be a good citizen?


Thank you.

Edit: 18 Aug 2005 21:52
I must admit, I'm a little disappointed that nobody responded to this post. Come on, people, I really want to know! Please tell me what you think about good citizenship!

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

We're all at pennsic?

I'll comment more later...

[jducoeur]

Posting a question this complex while everyone's at Pennsic is asking for frustration -- most of us didn't see it at the time, and can't give it full attention while we're catching up on 500 back messages now. That said, a few thoughts:

The US was founded as a grand experiment in political philosophy. That experiment presumes a few things of its citizens. In particular, it presumes that they do their best to stay informed about the issues of the day, enough so to be able to select appropriate representatives. That design didn't really anticipate the sheer skill at media manipulation we see today, so I usually consider there to be an additional requirement that a good citizen needs to be *skeptical* enough to make informed decisions. The experiment also presumes that people can rise above simple tribalism -- some of the founding fathers were skeptical of the idea of parties specifically because of the kind of effects we're seeing today.

Am I good citizen? That's implying a boolean answer to what I see as a pretty analog question. I think I'm reasonably good -- I try hard to stay informed about the important bits, and to act accordingly. I'm not *as* good as some people I know, who work more actively to keep the populace informed, but I think I do adequately. And I try to keep myself from being too tribal; Bush makes that difficult, but I check my Democratic leanings by reminding myself that I considered myself moderately "conservative" until that term got horribly corrupted by the crypto-fascists.

Is it important? Hell, yes. It's the only check this country has against the totalitarianism that some forces would love to push it into, and it only works if a large enough critical mass of citizens take that responsibility seriously...