Ask Not

Flags were at half-staff all over the US on Tuesday for the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, in remembrance of the thousands dead of 11 years ago.

On Wednesday the order came to lower the flags again, this time in honor of the 4 dead in Benghazi. 

Today, Saturday, they are still at half staff, in front of state buildings, schools, also shopping centers and homes.

A hard, scary, sad week here and abroad.  So much violence and hatred.  And such mean incitement to violence here in America.  A stupid hateful film poured gasoline on years of already burning lies and anger about religion, inciting young men all over the world to storm US embassies and old men in the US, supposedly Christian, to pour even more fuel on the fire. 

It appears that the anti-Muslim film, made six months ago by a Southern Californian so-called Christian Coptic pretending to be Jewish, got a new dose of publicity fuel from a Florida pastor who has previously burned Korans.  Then the Mormon-Christian presidential candidate thought he’d win votes by turning the flame up higher.

As Holden Caulfield said in Catcher in the Rye, “Some of the things that have been done in Jesus’ name would make him puke.”

So I feel a rant coming on.  Probably repeating myself, as I surely will all the way to Election Day.  Wake up and look around you, Americans.  We are not the only or best citizens of the world.  We are not the world’s cowboys (see last week – Clint.)  We were not founded as a Christian nation, nor are we all Christians.  And for those of us who are, surely we could honor our lord and savior a bit more faithfully if we never do what he never did; lie, incite violence and hate, kill, and lie some more.  We’ve got some good American history and values to stand for, and some horrible history and lies and violence to atone for. 

And as to how to respond to any death, but especially sacrifice for country, there’s a time to speak and a time to shut up. (After Romney’s arrogant, misinformed comments Roger Cohen wrote in his NY Times Europe column: “This September surprise has given the world cause to appreciate the cool head in the White House and worry about the hothead who aspires to replace him. Romney, in Jacques Chirac’s immortal phrase, ‘lost a good opportunity to keep quiet.’  His words reflected a shoot-from-the-hip, America-first approach to the world that will not fly in a time of deep interdependency. Two scarring wars have demonstrated that.”)

So I think again and again about what it means to be a US citizen these days.  And after watching as much as I could stand of the party conventions the past weeks, I could see there are at least two answers:  I am a citizen, that gives me certain rights; what’s in it for me - no one can tell me what to do.  Or: I am a citizen, that gives me certain responsibilities; I have work to do with my fellow citizens and my nation – we’re all in this together.

“As citizens, we understand that American is not about what can be done for us.  It’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government.”

Many of us Americans heard in these words of President Obama at the Democratic Convention last week the echoes of President Kennedy’s inaugural speech over 50 years ago; “Ask not what your country can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your country.”

In his own inauguration almost 4 years ago Obama introduced the theme:

“What is required of us is a new era of responsibility – a recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept, but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.

“This is the price and the promise of citizenship. This is the source of our confidence – the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny. This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall; and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served in a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.”

 He returned last week to the theme of “the price and promise of citizenshp,” saying in Charlotte: “We also believe in something called citizenship – a word at the very heart of our founding, at the very essence of our democracy; the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another, and to future generations. Because we understand that this democracy is ours.

“We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.”

If you polled Americans, I doubt they would agree that there is a price as well as a promise of citizenship, responsibilities as well as rights.  Many of my fellow citizens define citizenship as membership card, a bestower of privileges, a key to the executive washroom, a license to own guns.  It’s about what’s in it for me.

Obama was sometimes called “educator in chief” early in his administration for his professorial speeches and conviction that ideas, such as responsibility, can actually change people and policies.  He is trying to teach us that citizenship is not just about privileges but also participation, promise as well as price.

To paraphrase the “land ethic” of environmentalist Aldo Leopold: “America (The land) is not a commodity that belongs to us, but a community to which we belong.”  (We might expand that community to the world; we are world citizens.)

To be a citizen is not about certain rights belonging to us, but a certain community, nationality, to which we belong.  I notice that Obama begins many speeches not with the usual “My fellow Americans..” but “My fellow citizens…”

Obama also said in his inaugural, “We remain a young nation.  But in the words of Scripture, the time has come to put away childish things.”  Thinking we can own something, like citizenship, keep it all for ourselves, without any responsibility for its care, health, availability, is a youthful, selfish folly.  To be an adult means we realize we’re all in this together.

Americans are getting another 9/11 wake up call this week, another push to put away childish things, another lesson in the school of citizenship.   Let’s hope we learn from the educator in chief’s classy classes about responsibility and community.

As my wise fellow columnist Kevin Brown here at the Back Road Café knows that Dietrich Bonhoeffer said about discipleship, citizenship has a cost as well as a joy.

Copyright © 2012 Deborah Streeter