American Citizenship Has Its Rights--and Obligations

We have two great democratic traditions within the American constitutional system: the liberal and the republican. The essence of liberal democracy is the “liberation” of the individual--his empowerment and protection from the illegitimate reach of the community. Democratic republicanism, by contrast, stresses the legitimate concerns of the community, often as opposed to the interests of individuals.

Both traditions are important. Our liberal heritage is the result of a long struggle against unjust social, political and economic systems such as feudalism. This struggle led to the rise of the market system in which the individual could rise as far as his abilities could take him, regardless of the class into which he had been born. The communication emphasis of the republican tradition, however, is also important. It is so important, in fact, that there is a good cause to be made that the decline of both Rome and Athens was largely attributable to the breakdown of the community.

It is thus arguable that in a healthy modern democratic political culture, the liberal and republican elements would be roughly balanced. Public policy and law would reflect the attempt to balance the legitimate needs of the individual with those of the community. As many commentators have argued, however, contemporary American political culture has strayed from this balance, especially since the 1960s.

We might better understand this problem by distinguishing between a consumer and a citizen. As I define him, a consumer is focused centrally on his own concerns, as well as those, perhaps, of his family, friends and social class, to the general exclusion of all others. A citizen, by contrast, particularly the citizen of a democracy, has the capacity and inclination for commitment to the community, including those groups whose immediate interests he does not share.

On this model, it seems that Americans have become largely a society of passive, complaining consumers, indifferent if not hostile to the concerns of the general community.

What would it be to act as a citizen? Among other things, it would include the capacity to tolerate the inevitable imperfection of government. This is especially true for citizens of democratic government, the inefficiency of which flows largely from the deliberate dispersal of political power under a constitution. Those obsessed with efficiency might prefer dictatorship, in which one person’s wish is the law, with no need for discussion or consensus.

To validate the views of those who disagree with me, I gladly concede that it is always fair to ask whether government is doing the right thing and, even if it is, whether it is doing it as efficiently as it could. My crucial point is that if a citizen does not like the answers to these questions, he does not simply conclude that government or its programs are only evil and must be abolished.

A good case in point is affirmative action, a hot topic in both Washington and Sacramento these days. This is a difficult issue, and so far as I can tell, there is no particular arrangement that satisfies all legitimate concerns.

I can agree, for example, with those who have said that affirmative action often has been administered quite unfairly. As a white male, there is no question in my mind that I have for this reason lost positions to those far less qualified. Given this country’s undeniable history of exclusion based on race, however, I cannot agree that affirmative action programs should be abolished.

I reject the conclusion, that is, that we should abandon the goal of remedying past and present discrimination simply because the means are problematic. I thus agree with President Clinton’s general prescription to “mend it, don’t end it.”

It remains to be seen, of course, how well affirmative action can be mended. The fact that we inevitably wind up with a less than perfect system, however, does not compel the conclusion that it should be discarded, especially where it attempts to balance the legitimate concerns of those on different sides of the issue.

Perhaps it is time to relearn one of the lessons of Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher who founded the civic republican tradition. For Aristotle, a necessary component of virtue, or a good human life, is civic virtue.

This is the capacity of a citizen to balance his commitments to both private and public interests. Aristotle recognized that only through such a capacity, dispersed throughout the citizenry, could a risky form of government like democracy remain stable and endure.