The Critical Citizen

The perspective of the critical citizen is seemingly the motivation that founded this great country. However, rather than object to the British government, this motivation caused our founding fathers to secede from it, declaring independence. From this example one would believe that it is the critical citizen model that should mold citizenship not only in America, but in nations around the world. This perceptive allows democracy to reach its full potential. Without it, governments can become totalitarian and oppressive.
Nathanson suggests that the critical citizen believes that government’s right to rule is based on its commitment to justice, whereas just governments have the right to rule and unjust governments do not. Hobbes contests that citizens do not hold the right to determine if governments’ laws are just or unjust and that such a freedom would lead to chaos due to arbitrary and ambiguous notions of justice. Hobbes’ argument seems faulty on two points. First, governments are generally established in nations, nation which can be defined as a group of people with a recognized and shared culture and history. In most cases it would seem illogical to think that a people with an alike history and culture would have dramatically different notions of justice, just as it would be logical to conclude that this group would have similar notions of morality. The Sunni-Shiite conflict seems to be one of few exceptions of this rule. Secondly, government’s purpose over all else is to preserve life and liberty. It would seem that if ever government lost sight of its purpose, especially in the case of life, it would be not only logical, but necessary to be critical of government. In a similar argument Nathanson notes “If the function of governments is to protect people’s rights, then a government is legitimate as long as it does that… (82)” One may content that this just gives the citizen the unlimited freedom that Hobbes fears. This maybe true, but the law of nature insists that one strive to preserve his own life, even when government infringes on it.
I have come to learn that whenever two opposing positions are presented against each other it is almost certain that there is some truth and some falsehood in each. Nathanson argues that the government should do whatever the citizens cannot do for themselves. If this is true, then it is possible that government will become the authoritarian government Hobbes argues for. What if people can do nothing for themselves? Then government must be everything. Former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was once quoted “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” This is the type of government that Nathanson is advocating for with this argument.
Is the critical citizen perspective a good model for citizenship in the contemporary United States? This question is easier to answer when the question is formulated as such: Is the critical citizen perspective a bad model for citizenship in the contemporary United States? For this to be true, the critical perspective being bad for the U.S. citizen, the government would have to be perfect, meaning the critical perspective would be unnecessary. The critical perspective would be unnecessary because the goals of establishing justice, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty would accomplished and maintained naturally. There would be nothing to be critical about. We know that this is not the case in America. The government is not perfect. Regarding liberty, people are being held in Guantanamo Bay without knowing the charges against them, without the writ of habeas corpus. Promoting the general welfare is a goal, yet there are patterns of poverty that exist in out nations urban centers. Many urban schools cannot provide the quality education available in suburban schools, arguably starting and facilitating these patterns of poverty. The distribution of justice is unequal when sentencing guidelines for cocaine are different dependent on what form it takes. Powdered cocaine, the drug generally associated with whites and “recreational” drug use, has lesser sentencing guidelines than crack cocaine, the form associated with minorities and “criminal” drug use. I’ve given these examples to just to say that government is not perfect, and since it is not, citizens have the moral obligation to be critical.