What it Means to Be a Citizen of the United States of America (Part 1 of 3)
“I hope foreigners will not judge us by our President. I hope he will keep the peace, but I am afraid our Union has commenced to break and will soon fall to pieces. But God knows what is best and we can leave all in His hands.”
– Attributed to Anna Ridgely of Springfield, Illinois, about the newly elected President Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
Lincoln himself once exclaimed, “Just think of such a sucker as me as President!”
As a citizen of the United States of America, the concepts of citizenship, liberty, and freedom are deeply ingrained into our national identity. This essay or heartfelt reflection is something I have pondered over the years, and now, at over 80 years old, I feel compelled to put my observations into words to make sense of my life experiences and to understand what it truly means to be an American citizen.
I am a product of the military draft system during the post-war era, choosing to serve rather than avoid what I believed was my duty as a citizen. An unwavering commitment to these ideals has shaped my life; they have grown over time to include many perspectives—some conservative, others radical.
Is there enough ‘glue’ to hold our country together when it sometimes seems to be falling apart? Looking back through history, we see that all previous efforts at democracy have ultimately failed despite their obvious benefits to the people. Is it a flawed concept? Possibly in some ways…
Growing up in the immediate post-WWII era, when the country seemed very united and was taking on its role as the leader of the free world, all of us were expected to pledge allegiance to the flag and recite the Lord’s Prayer every day in public school, where the Ten Commandments were displayed in every homeroom.
Looking back now, I believe it gave us a sense of unity and togetherness. These practices gradually faded away as challenges arose from minority groups within the nation, who viewed them as demeaning to some but meaningful to many of us, like me. I believe citizenship subsequently began to experience a small but definite erosion of its national character. I didn’t understand why this simple exercise was being challenged at the time, but it seemed easier politically to stop doing something than to uphold tradition.
Still, these early years shaped me and many in my generation and strengthened our personal belief in what it truly means to be an American.
The American Revolution, with its rallying cry of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” established the foundation for a nation based on limited government and individual rights. These ideas, expressed in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, have become the core of American political thought, serving as a unifying theme that transcends the diverse stories of the American experience.
Yet, the path to securing and preserving these liberties has not been without challenges, both internal and external, that have threatened our very existence. The sociopolitical structure that led to the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution was not initially democratic, and the ongoing effort to expand the definition of liberty and freedom to include all citizens has been a continual process.
As James Bryce noted, the strong American dedication to freedom and the belief that the United States is the only true representation of this ideal have been defining features of the nation.
The Difference Between a Democracy and a Republic – Why This is Important
If you ask most U.S. citizens what kind of system we use to govern, they will incorrectly say that we are a democracy. In reality, we are a constitutional republic, and the differences are simple but important. It’s actually reflected in the words of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag!
It essentially means we are a collection of independent states united in a union, brought together by our first President, George Washington, and kept united by his successors, primarily Lincoln. The Civil War was fought to preserve this Union; it was challenged over the issue of slavery. Democracy and republic are often used interchangeably, but they are distinct political systems with unique features.
A basic way to define democracy is that it is a system of government where all power is held by the people, who rule directly. Conversely, a republic is a form of government in which ultimate authority resides in the people themselves but is exercised through elected representatives. To add to this, there are variations within each of these two basic systems.
One key difference that confuses many people between a democracy and a republic is the method of decision-making. In a pure democracy, citizens participate directly in decision-making by voting on issues and laws, virtually everything. The majority rules. In a republic, citizens elect representatives who then make decisions on their behalf. Another distinction is the role of individual rights. Democracies tend to emphasize the will of the majority, while republics aim to protect the rights of all individuals.
I believe the most common expressions or words that people think of when discussing the benefits of the American form of citizenship are best summarized in these frequently used terms.
LIBERTY – The freedom to live as you wish or go where you want.
LOYALTY – A faithfulness that is steadfast in the face of any temptation to renounce, desert or betray.
PATRIOT – A feeling of love devotion and sense of attachment/duty/service to a country or state.
FREEDOM – Associated with liberty and autonomy, ie, the power or right to speak act or change as one wants without hindrance.
SELF-DETERMINATION – i.e., determined by oneself without outside influence.
EQUALITY – Aach of us has the same value, with all human beings born free and equal. Without the concept of equality for all, freedom and all the rest, cannot exist.
CITIZENSHIP – The state of being a member of a particular country and having rights because of it; behaving/conforming in a way that other people who live there expect of you. A citizen is not the same as a subject in a monarchy or dictatorship.
DEMOCRACY – A system of government by the majority of its eligible citizens.
REPUBLIC – Rarely used description, but realistically, the best description of our nation.
These terms are all interrelated but can often be at odds with each other. They can sometimes be intermixed, adding to confusion about what they mean – often then rapidly becoming an individual interpretation, i.e., the freedom to accept as true what you want to believe. For purposes of discussion, let’s think of them all as more or less synonymous with what being an American means. To my mind, some level of friction exists between all of these ideas.
During the uprising in China in 1989, many were asked what they were seeking, and the common response was ‘Freedom, we don’t know what it is exactly, but we want it’. They even built a replica of the Statue of Liberty in front of Beijing’s Forbidden City. Did they truly understand what they were asking for, or were they seeking something different from what they had that attracted them at the time?
Here, we see an example of thousands, possibly millions of non-Americans, all at the same time and place, searching for something they did not fully understand. The same can be said of the 18th-century French Revolution. Was it for the same reasons as what we American citizens believe we have? We are seemingly free to do this, exercise our free will, to do that, etc… Basically, many believe that anything you want to do is possible; here are some of those ideas.
Liberty means a government that does not take away my personal property, real estate or possessions.
Liberty needs a government based on law. Without law, one cannot have liberty.
Liberty means that people must be free from violence, intimidation and other inappropriate actions by individuals or any level of government.
Liberty: No one should harm another person in their pursuit of liberty or in their right to hold, sell, or possess any item. People must have the freedom to make choices about their lives and to act on those choices without fear of interrogation or violence, as long as they follow current laws and widely accepted social norms.
Freedom of assembly: The right to gather and protest against your country or government.
Mr Kaye
Thank you for this message and clearing through the chat.
I don’t possess your experience but see the same things.
Praying and hope are not strategy… buts it’s what I have right now other than voting.
Thank you!
I appreciate your work on this. In Colin Woodard’s book “The Eleven Nations of North America” which looks at the USA from a regional view based on its original colonialists and their societies and cultures, he makes a distinction between the terms “freedom” and “Liberty”, which are often used interchangeably in regard to the founding of the USA. Woodard sees liberty as emanating mostly from the Southern colonies with Virginia at the time the largest and most influential, it was based on an individual’s ability to be unencumbered by governmental laws and restrictions to pursue happiness (economically mostly but in other ways as well). Freedom is a concept more developed in the New England colonies. It is communitarian, where the ability to thrive and pursue happiness depends on living in a supportive place with education, infrastructure, institutional integrity being required. Liberty is the offshoot of a plantation slave society where the individual involved was a property owner because slaves and indentured workers or landless men were not granted the same liberty as the land and slave owning class. Freedom is the offshoot of Puritan society where individuals were farmers, machinists, merchants, etc. able to become masters of their own destiny if enriched by the society’s institutions (church, school, state). Much of American history revolves around the conflict between these two notions of the founding fathers. Hamilton v Jefferson, Jackson v Marshall, Lincoln/Union v Confederacy/Slavery, etc. etc. etc.
The recent piece on “What it means to be a Citizen” reveals a profound cognitive dissonance common among the post-WWII generation—a nostalgia for an America that never was, and an authoritarianism enabled in the present to “restore” an ideal that never existed.
The author mourns the fading of state-sponsored religious indoctrination, such as the daily recital of the Lord’s Prayer and the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools. He frames this as a loss of “unity.” But we must be honest about what that “unity” required: the forced homogeneity of a settler-colonial perspective. In the post-WWII era the author cites so fondly, African Americans were being driven from Detroit neighborhoods by white mobs, LGBTQ individuals and atheists were social outcasts, and the federal government was actively pursuing “Termination” policies to dismantle Tribal sovereignty.
The “unity” of that era was not a consensus; it was a silencing.
There is a particular hypocrisy in this brand of modern “Yooper” Americanism. Much of the current MAGA-aligned fervor in the U.P. is driven by the children and grandchildren of French Canadian, Finnish, and Scandinavian immigrants—families who arrived long after the foundations of this land were laid. The irony is that the very “unity” the author recalls was an assimilation machine designed to scrub the “foreignness” out of those European arrivals. For their descendants to now use those same tools of homogeneity as a weapon against the modern “minority” is to forget that their own grandfathers were once the outsiders. They are defending a fortress built over the bones of Anishinaabe land and the suppressed cultures of their own ancestors. To claim a “traditional” Americanism while ignoring the Anishinaabe, who remain the true foundational community of the U.P., is a convenient form of historical amnesia.
You cannot claim to “protect the rights of all individuals” while longing for a return to a “majority rules” democracy that mandates Christian prayer for Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and atheist children. That is not freedom; it is religious majoritarianism. Real patriotism requires looking critically at our failures and having the courage to evolve. It means putting the “experiment” back into the Great Democratic Experiment by adopting global best practices—whether that is universal health care, strong worker protections, or high progressive tax rates to ensure a social safety net where individuals are enabled to become their best selves without the fear of losing their homes or healthcare.
As a 21-year federal civil servant and attorney, I have given my career to this nation. I have seen how our society values military service over the quiet, essential labor of public service. In those two decades, I have watched this country become more economically stratified and more openly lawless. Citizenship in a Republic means recognizing we are one nation in a global community where international law matters, where the Judiciary doesn’t “invent” executive immunity, and where “freedom” is defined by our tolerance and respect for others—not by our ability to force them to recite our prayers.