A citizen is a person who is a member of our country. A person with a significant number of rights and some significant responsibility.
A child born to parents that are both citizens is immediately a probationary citizen (meaning they are not full-fledged citizens until the age of majority)
People not born to citizen parents are NOT “citizens” until and unless they go through the process of being “Nationalized”
Citizens have the protection of the law and the constitution. It is a social contract between the “People” and the “State”
“The People” agree to follow the laws that the state creates as long as the State agrees to follow the constitution (The rules that the government must follow)
In this country it is understood that “the Government” is subordinate to “the People”.
Citizens have responsibilities such as paying taxes, Voting, Supporting emergency services in time of need and gathering in a militia for the general protection of all.
This is the price that is paid for the government that is designed to protect the people freedoms.
Lately the government has not been doing its job and it is the responsibility of the people to FIX the government.
One reply on “Political beliefs (Citizens and citizenship)”
This raises two issues. First, it appears that you’re saying that “probationary citizens,” i.e. children, don’t have the protection of law. That’s easily fixes by simply including them among those who have that protection. It’s wrong not to.
The second issue is more difficult to fix and, as far as I’ve been able to learn, remains both a legal and philosophical debate to this day. If, as Jefferson wrote, “all men are … endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights,” then, well, all men have those rights. The question is, does the U.S. government have the responsibility of protecting those rights for non-citizens? I contend that it does, but only for for everyone who is physically within the country’s borders. (Also for any citizen abroad. For non-citizens abroad, our responsibility ends at the border. See below.)
It’s just wrong to, for example, allow a non-citizen to be robbed and have no recourse to the law while a robbed citizen does. I can’t think of a way to justify that.
On the other hand, we have zero responsibility to protect the rights of non-citizens who are not in the country. That is the responsibility of the government of whatever location they are actually in. If that government doesn’t protect their rights, we are under no obligation to step in. We can choose to but should only do so if it’s in our national interest. This stops us wasting people and resources on being the world’s policeman.
If another government isn’t protecting the rights of our own citizens who are in its country, we should take whatever steps are necessary to correct that situation, up to and including obliterating the people who are failing to protect, or are violating, our citizens’ rights. (Once the job is done, we should leave – no “nation building” or other such nonsense. It’s up to that country’s citizens to fix their own mess unless we have a compelling national security reason – a much higher bar than national interest – to do more. That will be exceedingly rare if people understand that they could be destroyed if they harm our citizens again.)
Philosophically, there are those who claim we have an obligation to protect the rights of everyone, everywhere. Their (lousy 🙂 ) arguments can be found elsewhere so I won’t go over them here.