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Although we are born with natural gifts of reasoning and gaining virtue - we need almost everything we have to be good citizens. Without being more cognizant of our inclinations to slip into these lower gears of cognitive awareness (which include carelessness, forgetfulness, excessive pride, and arrogance) we individually fail to maintain the temperament needed to do the complicated work of self-government.
In his book, If You Can Keep It, Eric Metaxas writes about these duties and obligations to self and others brilliantly:
“In a Republic, … each man must somehow be persuaded to submerge his personal wants into the greater good of the whole.” (Metaxas P50)
“[The Founders] knew that without … [virtue and morality] … the Constitution they had written and the republican system of government which it provided could not be maintained.” (Metaxas P54)
“The Constitution and the men who created it put these unimaginably great and fragile things in the hands of the people. So these things - still unimaginably great and fragile- are in our hands now, this minute…” (Metaxas P11)
“We are inescapably exceptional and therefore inescapably burdened with the responsibility to help others…. if we don’t do our duty toward keeping that promise, our nation will soon cease to exist in any real sense.” (Metaxas P193)
In the workshop, Ingredient Two asks students to discuss and challenge the following statements:
It’s much harder to be a good citizen than it is a good person.
Citizenship carries with it duties and obligations not easily maintained without daily practice.
If you want to live deep in the remote woods somewhere alone, “ordinary” will do just fine, but as people who interact in a large and diverse environment it requires that we move beyond our ordinary, it requires that we be remarkable.
Without daily observance to proper conduct - as defined by Natural Laws - we unknowingly shrink from bigger to smaller and contribute to a divided and hate filled society.
Being a good citizen - it's that hard!
To make American Democracy work it will require a commitment by everyone in our society far greater than we’ve been making.
If we could someday appreciate the complexity - of democracy - a future generation might someday be successful in preparing citizens to be up for the challenge.
Because we fail to teach the duties and responsibilities of citizenship in our schools is in part why we remain stuck with what we have.
Quotation to discuss with class concerning the difference between remarkable and ordinary:
“What the superior man seeks is in himself. What the ordinary man seeks is in others.” - Confucius
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