The Citizen And The Republic

Citizenship in a Republic is the title of a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt, former President of the United States, at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on April 23, 1910. One notable passage from the speech is referred to as "The Man in the Arena": It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."But with you and with us the case is different. With you here, and with us in my own home, in the long run, success or failure will be conditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average woman, does his or her duty, first in the ordinary, every-day affairs of life, and next in those great occasional crises which call for the heroic virtues. The average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics are to succeed. The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high; and the average can not be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher.

The Constitution has governed the United States since 1789, but many Americans are not aware of the structural rules that govern the oldest democracy in the world. Important public policy challenges require a knowledgeable, interested citizenry able to address the issues that represent the rich pageantry of American society. Issues such as climate change, national debt, poverty, pandemics, income inequality, and more can be addressed sufficiently if citizens play an active role in their own republic. Collectively, citizens are vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation if we place limits on our individual political knowledge. A more informed, engaged citizenry can best rise to the great policy challenges of contemporary society and beyond. Brian L. Fife provides readers with essential information on all aspects of American politics, showing them how to use political knowledge to shape the future of the republic. Activist citizens are the key to making the United States a more vibrant democracy. Fife equips citizens and would-be citizens with the tools and understanding they need to engage fully in the political process. At the end of each chapter, he analyzes why citizenship matters and how citizens can use that chapter’s material in their own lives. Fife also provides readers with a citizen homework section that presents web links to further explore issues raised in each chapter.

This book offers a critical perspective into social policy architectures primarily in relation to questions of race, national identity and belonging in the Americas. It is the first to identify a connection between the role of international actors in promoting the universal provision of legal identity in the Dominican Republic with arbitrary measures to restrict access to citizenship paperwork from populations of (largely, but not exclusively) Haitian descent. The book highlights the current gap in global policy that overlooks the possible alienating effects of social inclusion measures promulgated by international organisations, particularly in countries that discriminate against migrant-descended populations. It also supports concerns regarding the dangers of identity management, noting that as administrative systems improve, new insecurities and uncertainties can develop. Crucially, the book provides a cautionary tale over the rapid expansion of identification practices, offering a timely critique of global policy measures which aim to provide all people everywhere with a legal identity in the run-up to the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Excerpt from The Citizen and the Republic: A d104-Book in Government His volume is intended as a text - book for use in courses in Civil Government in secondary schools. It should (6 follow, or accompany, a high school course in American History. It is an attempt to answer the demand for that if Which is needful and important in the new civics some times called community civics, and at the same time to hold fast to that Which is good in the old. S, In introducing an educational reform there is always Q danger of over - emphasis; there is danger that we may not ?%have a good thing Without having too much of it. The '9 authors of this volume, While emphasizing community civics and the moral purposes in teaching government, have sought to avoid a one - sided course. They believe that the schools should study the community and such new civics as the changing times call for, and especially that they should give attention to current history and present day problems of democracy; but it is equally important not 3 to neglect certain aspects of the old established order. It may be well to set pupils to the laboratory method of studying the g actual life of our city communities, how milk and water are g supplied, how food is distributed, how public health is pre ss served, how the streets are kept clean (or dirty), how the taxes are raised and used, and how the schools are sustained. But to limit a high school coursein civics to such a field of study is to commit a great wrong to young people Who are under training for citizenship. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

France's Third Republic confronts historians and political scientists with what seems a paradox: it is at once France's most long-lived experiment with republicanism and a regime remembered primarily for chronic instability and spectacular scandal. From its founding in the wake of France's humiliation at the hands of Prussia to its collapse in the face of the Nazi Blitzkrieg, the Third Republic struggled to consolidate the often contradictory impulses of the French revolutionary tradition into a set of stable democratic institutions. To Be a Citizen is not an institutional history of the regime, but an exploration of the political culture gradually formed by the moderate republicans who steered it. In James R. Lehning's view, that culture was forced to reconcile conflicting views of the degree of citizen participation a republican form of government should embrace. The moderate republicans called upon the entire nation to act as citizens of the Republic even as they limited the ability of many, including women, Catholics, and immigrants, to assume this identity and to participate in political life. This participation, based on universal male suffrage alone, was at odds with the notion of universal citizenship--the tradition of direct democracy as expressed in 1789, 1793, 1830, and 1848. Lehning examines a series of events and issues that reveal both the tensions within the republican tradition and the regime's success. It forged a political culture that supported the moderate republican synthesis and blunted the ideal of direct democracy. To Be a Citizen not only does much to illuminate an important chapter in the history of modern France, but also helps the reader understand the dilemmas that arise as political elites attempt to accommodate a range of citizens within ostensibly democratic systems.