Apologies if this is in the wrong section in advance.
In my AP government class, one of our assignments involves conducting interviews about citizenship. Any input would be appreciated, and the questions are actually pretty good for discussion. Anyway here goes:
1.) How would you define citizenship?
Well the legal definition for the US is along the lines of a person born in the US and/or of US parents or who has been through the naturalization process who then has all the rights and privileges spelled out in the Constitution.
A less-US specific definition would be a person who a) has a right to live in a country, b) is officially represented by the government of that country, and c) is
legally equal to all other represented people in their country.
The third aspect is vital in differentiating a citizen from a subject (in which legal differences in status are enforced).
2.) Out of the following rights, which two do you think are the most valuable?
1) Life (kinda hard to have any other right if you aren't alive)
2) Justice
3.) Out of the following rights, which do you consider the two most taken for granted?
Rights:
-Life
-Liberty
-Dignity
-Security
-Equality of Opportunity
-Justice
-Privacy
-Private Ownership of Property
Life and private ownership of property (though this is a hard call because its easy to find groups not taking any of these rights except maybe dignity for granted...but I didn't choose dignity for a reason).
However, before ending this post, I think its necessary to do some looking through this list. We need some definitions.
Liberty: What is liberty? Its clearly not the right to do everything because we don't have a right to murder. Its not even a right to do everything as long as it doesn't harm others because we have victim-less crimes like drug use and seat belt laws. Instead of liberty we should probably break this "right" down into its component parts. The single most important part is probably freedom of thought/conscience. We have the right to
believe anything we want. I could believe that cannibalism should be a right and the government could do nothing against me. In the US we take this right a step further and say you have the right to
talk about any set of beliefs you might have without punishment. I can shout from the rooftops that I think the only purpose for Irish people is for them to be enslaved bar tenders and again I could not be punished. Yet we still limit speech if it can be shown to directly lead to the harm of others (like inciting a riot). The key to all this is that which causes harm is disallowed. ( harm almost always defined as either physical or property damage with emotional/mental damage almost always being too nebulous to be considered and when it is the result is typically in the context of a civil not a criminal case). So what we have is if something causes harm it is not considered part of liberty, but given that non-harmful things are considered appropriate to ban we don't really have a good definition of liberty beyond freedom of thought.
Dignity probably shouldn't even be on this list. What is it? Is it maintaining face? Do we have the right for the government not to embarrass us? If we get thrown in jail do we have the right to a certain set of "dignified" attire? If the IRS seizes property because we failed to pay taxes do we have the right to have it only done when the neighbors won't notice? Where in the Constitution is even the
implied right to dignity? I wouldn't include this in a list of rights.
Equality of opportunity is a problematic thing. Ultimately the only way to have true equality of opportunity would be to take children away from their parents and raise them all in regulated environments that control for all the significant factors in upbringing that cause inequality of opportunity. But no one thinks thats a good idea except hard core marxists. So then the other end of the spectrum would be provide everyone with legal equality and ignore all non-governmental circumstances leading to inequality of opportunity. That would be a coherent definition, but people seem to want more than that. So what we've ended up with is a problematic situation with "equality of opportunity" meaning whatever the person saying it wants to mean (whether it simply means having access to education or some equalizing of the circumstances of parents or access to the exact same education everywhere). Its hard to support or provide a "right" when there is no coherent idea of what that right even is.