Citizens, Not Subjects

Citizens, not subjects. No need for monarchs and aristocrats. Citizens, arguing, resolving, and volunteering.

Citizens making and repairing. Citizens, the promise of America.

“The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.”

So wrote Thomas Paine in 1776—not simply of independence, but also of freedom, equality, and democracy.

“The independence of America would have added little to the country’s own happiness, and been of no benefit to the world if her government had been formed on the corrupt models of the old world. It was the opportunity of beginning the world anew… Of bringing forward a new system of government in which the rights of all men should be preserved that gave value to independence.”

Citizens, not subjects.

“All men are created equal… endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights… among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Citizens, not subjects.

“We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish...”

Citizens, not subjects.

And as Tocqueville observed, we needed few instructions: “No sooner do you set foot upon American ground than you are stunned by a kind of tumult; a confused clamor is heard on every side, and a thousand simultaneous voices demand the satisfaction of their social wants. Everything is in motion around you; here the people of one quarter of a town are met to decide upon the building of a church; there the election of a representative is going on; a little farther out, the delegates of a district are hastening to the town in order to consult upon some local improvements; in another place, the laborers of a village quit their plows to deliberate upon the project of building a road or a public school."

Citizens, not subjects.

And the promise was progressive and expansive.

“There must be continual additions to our great experiment of how much liberty society will bear,” Walt Whitman contended.

“If women really want security, real representation, honesty, wise and just legislation, happier and more comfortable conditions of living,” Eleanor Roosevelt urged her sisters, “they must bestir themselves.”

“Freedom and democracy are never given,” A. Philip Randolph reminded his black union brothers, “They are won.”
“We are a choosing people, not a chosen people,” Lewis Mumford wrote; and “We draw our strength from all the nations that have helped make us.”

Citizens, not subjects. But not for ourselves alone.

“To be a good husband and a good father,” Jefferson declared, “you must also be a good citizen.”

“A true patriotism,” FDR insisted, “urges us to build an even more substantial America where the good things of life are shared by more of us, where social injustices are not encouraged to flourish.”

Citizens, not subjects. Confronting challenges and crises—then and now.

“Never were we more aware of America [and] that we have in our hands the magnificent makings of a new society, a really new economic era. It waits only for the liquidation of our biggest frozen asset, the active and responsible citizen,” Anne O'Hare McCormick wrote in 1932.

Citizens, not subjects, then and today.

"Now, more than ever,” Barack Obama averred, “we must rededicate ourselves to the notion that we share a common destiny as Americans—that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper. Now, we must all do our part to serve one another, to seek new ideas and new innovation, and to start a new chapter for our great country... After all, that's what Americans have always done."

As citizens, not subjects, Paine announced, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again… The birthday of a new world is at hand.”

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future