What Is A Responsible Citizen?
An Informed Consensus Builder and Mentor.

Responsible citizens look for the good in people. They always endeavor to model infectious
enthusiasm for life and for what can be accomplished when we know the truth, learn leadership skills, and then put them into action.

Our nation is searching for responsible citizens, especially those who will become young leaders. But what is a responsible citizen? We'll give you some things to think about in this page. Some of it will challenge you, some of it might tick off a few readers.

But the end goal is to inspire critical listening and compassionate courage to use the immense skills inside you. Be assured there are plenty of young people ready to take their leadership positions. We've worked with groups of young leaders who took the lessons of truth and put them into action with fearless determination to be responsible citizens.

Lets begin with one clear distinction that will be the centerpiece of this page. Understand that duties always come before rights. If we don't uphold the duties of responsible citizens, we will eventually lose the rights.

“The true source of rights is duty. If we all discharge our duties, right will not be far to seek. If leaving duties unperformed we run after rights, they will escape us like a will-o'-the-wisp. The more we pursue them, the farther they fly".  Mahatma Gandhi

What is a responsible citizen? When answering that question, based on experience with those young groups, we would suggest that citizen would possess some of the following qualities we found on those student-led teams.

Honesty                            Integrity                        Compassion
Humility                           Courage                         Patience
Intelligence                     Enthusiasm for life      Insightful Wisdom

They also have a sense of wonder. What could be accomplished with team synergy focused on a worthwhile goal?  They are teachable. They want to learn how to lead by example. A responsible citizen will want to learn the skills to lead. They will wonder how to make things better, to unite and uplift, to promote honesty in discussions aimed at problem-solving. 

This page is designed to build upon past posts. We're building these in a specific order to offer some skills that will help our readers take their roles as leaders in continuing the American Dream. All of those previous posts are found in our page directory.

change the world

Duties of a Responsible Citizen

What is a responsible citizen? If duties come before rights, he or she is someone who will take the following steps. 

Stay informed about the issues affecting our communities.

Participate fully in the democratic process.

Respect and obey just federal, state, and local laws.

Respect the rights, beliefs, and opinions of others.

Support and defend the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights! Service to country above self!

Don't blame everyone else for our troubles or expect someone else to take care of us when we are fully capable.

Tell the truth!

We listed that first duty in the top spot for a reason. Staying informed, or maybe finally becoming informed is vital to fulfilling the duties of responsible citizens. We'll give you some compelling reasons in the paragraphs coming up a little farther down the page. Being blissfully unaware of the truth might offer short term appeasement, but there will be a heavy price later as you will read soon.

Participating in the democratic process leads us to the next two bullet points. Two duties of responsible citizens are to obey just laws and respect the rights and opinions of other citizens. We don't have to agree, and we do have the duty to peacefully protest unjust laws. We can peacefully, professionally protest injustice. That has been the key to overturning injustice in our history. That doesn't include burning businesses, breaking windows, or killing innocent human beings.

Responsible citizens are peaceful people who work within the framework of the Constitution to change unjust laws.

Responsible citizens look for the good in people. They always endeavor to model infectious enthusiasm for life and for what can be accomplished when we know the truth, learn leadership skills, and then put them into action.

They also have their eyes and ears wide open. They don't expect an answer to "what is a responsible citizen" to include blindly accepting governmental overreach driven by elitist agendas.

They remember those important words. “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.”  They keep that vision at the forefront of their role as leaders and mentors.

maturity

Responsible citizens recognize the truth. Putting a noun in front of the word "rights" doesn't make it true, nor does it make it an absolute right. My right to swing a closed fist ends at the point before it hits your jaw. It is my duty to respect your right to protection from harm as an innocent human.

Responsible citizens aren't whiners and complainers. We solve our problems ourselves, we admit when we are wrong, seek forgiveness, and get better.

"You say you haven't been the same since you had your little crash
But you might feel better if they gave you some cash.....

Don't want to work you want to live like a king, but the big bad world doesn't owe you a thing. Get over it."

Glenn Frey and Don Henley (from their song "Get Over It")

What is a Responsible Citizen?

Responsible citizens act on facts.. They read challenging books. They don't run from problems and they don't let government bureaucracies or millionaire monopoly games of influence take away Constitutional rights. The recognize their duties because abdicating those duties will eventually take away those supposed rights.

To empower our next generation, we need to provide an example to them. They will be bombarded by mendacious stories that falsely describe the elitiist agenda of government domination and socialism as the cure to all of society's ills. They will be told that gaining prosperity from work and effort is bad while continuing to live off government handouts is just and acceptable.

Our young people must have a stake in their own futures, not just a bill to pay because of the mistakes of their predecessors.

The souls of our fellow citizens, especially the younger people are the targets of the elitists, the eugenicists, and the ideologues who are certain they have a master plan that takes away the rights of parents to raise their own children, that puts bureaucracy in charge of controlling personal lives and falls into line with the corporate machines who profit from life-altering and life ending procedures.

"Thus the criminal ceases to be a person, a subject of rights and duties, and becomes merely an object on which society can work. And this is, in principle, how Hitler treated the Jews. They were objects; killed not for ill desert but because, on his theories, they were a disease in society. If society can mend, remake, and unmake men at its pleasure, its pleasure may, of course, be humane or homicidal. The difference is important. But, either way, rulers have become owners."
C. S. Lewis

Teach your sons and daughters to listen critically and think clearly. They will do what you do far more more often than do what you say. Be the example of a responsible citizen. We'll close this page with part of an an essay from John Anderson.

"It is not rights that give life its meaning, but responsibilities. No one ever got out of bed to face another day simply because he had a right to do so. He got out of bed because he had responsibilities—to himself, to his family, to his country, to God— that made the work, the disappointment, the suffering amidst the joys of life worth it, and meaningful.

If our conception of citizenship is reduced primarily to our rights against others, which is irresponsible citizenship, we will witness the collapse of civic virtue. Take away a person’s responsibilities and you take away his meaning. Take away his meaning and you watch him shrivel over time like fruit cut from the vine.

We are witnessing this now throughout the West. Irresponsible citizenship is dangerous. Authoritarian and totalitarian tendencies in governments and the technocratic expert classes thrive and grow on the sickness of irresponsible citizenship.

When too many citizens feel little inclination to contribute to their communities or to be self-reliant, governments are always happy to step in and help. This always comes at the cost of freedom.

President Dwight Eisenhower saw this danger over sixty years ago: 'Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.'

Robert Michels, said: 'He who has acquired power will almost always endeavor to consolidate it and to extend it, to multiply the ramparts which defend his position, and to withdraw himself from the control of the masses.'

James Burnham stated  'Managerial activity tends to become inbred and self-justifying. The enterprise comes to be thought of as existing for the sake of its managers – not the managers for the enterprise…. This is conspicuously true of governments..."

What Do You Think Defines A Responsible Citizen?

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