Taking control of our lives again.

AuthorJoyce, Michael S.
PositionCitizen involvement in public affairs

The essence of citizenship - or at least so it seems from the hectoring swarms of voter education and turn-out drives that descend upon Americans every election year - is to vote faithfully and thoughtfully, after becoming acquainted with all the policy prescriptions of the various candidates for office. To be a good citizen, in other words, demands that individuals wade through mind-numbing charts of policy positions regularly published each election year that set Candidate X's 17-point plan for reducing the deficit side-by-side with Candidate Y's 21-point plan for doing the same.

Citizenship thus understood is necessarily an episodic, infrequent, to say nothing of onerous duty. Its chief purpose seems to be to turn over to supposedly qualified experts the "real" business of public life - namely, designing and launching public programs of all sorts, which will bestow upon the victims of poverty or AIDS or discrimination or some other insidious force the tender mercies of bureaucrats, policy experts, social therapists, and others who claim to be uniquely able to cope with such problems by virtue of professional training. Once a citizen has voted, he or she is supposed to get out of the way and let the experts take over. Small wonder, then, that Americans today feel profoundly alienated from the realm of public life.

Genuine citizenship involves active participation in that vast realm of human affairs known as civil society. This is a far more expansive field for human endeavor than the political sphere, for civil society encompasses all the institutions through which people express their interests and values, outside of and distinct from government. Thus, civil society includes acquiring private property, holding a job, and earning a living. It includes what is done as loving members of families; as students or concerned parents within schools; as worshipful members of neighborhood associations, clubs, and voluntary organizations of all sorts. This broader understanding of citizenship also encompasses the full range o philanthropic activity, including committing energy and resources to helping others.

Clearly, citizenly activity within civil society occurs not episodically or infrequently, as with voting, but regularly and constantly, in countless small ways that are so much a part of the texture of everyday lives that people are almost unaware of them. Every time individuals attend church, go to a PTA meeting, help a charity drive, or perform faithfully and well a task at work, they are being decent citizens. In further contrast to voting, which supposedly engages chiefly abstract reasoning and objective judgment about candidates and policies, citizenship in this larger sense engages the full human being. That is, the institutions of civil society appeal to and sustain spirit and heart, as much as mind.

Heart and spirit are nurtured by the songs and fairy tales of home, the lessons of Sunday Bible class, the instruction at school, and the gentle advice and perhaps criticism of a neighbor, mentor, or friend. Through these countless, subtle, daily interactions, civil institutions give form and substance to the everyday qualities and values without which life itself would be impossible - honesty, perseverance, self-restraint, personal...

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