Every human being occurs naturally in the world but receives the investment of a family and community’s time and money. As much as you may believe yourself to be a unique individual, you are indeed the creation of others.
Life and citizenship are not a gift, but a loan: for to become a true citizen, you must recognize your eternal debt to those around you, to be repaid through service. We often characterize citizens in contrast to subjects or foreigners. In doing so, the positive virtues and responsibilities of citizenship are ignored.
True citizenship implies service to community, family, god, and country.
The provision of rights stands clearest among the benefits which we are granted from birth. We often speak of our human rights as natural, available to all without effort. A look at the world today shows that this is untrue; the rights of many are under assault, and some have never been properly realized. Once again, we owe the rights we have to the society around us to those past pioneers. We not only owe it to them to achieve the unfulfilled goals that these rights form.
Service is the instrument which protects and expands rights, in the face of an assault from weakening community ties, bigotry, corporate and governmental surveillance at home, and from authoritarian powers abroad. Pragmatically, a right is an ideal worth dying for. Service frequently comes in the form of willingness to fight and die in the defense of the rights of others.
We see this espoused by the servicemen of our own country. We see this in those who have stood for racial justice within this country, despite threats of violence. We see by the people of Ukraine, who are unafraid to die for the freedom of their countrymen.
To limit the importance of service to the defense our basic rights would be ill-advised. We see the virtues of citizenship espoused in those who turn their moral beliefs and judgments into actions: improving their hometowns, supporting the less fortunate, taking action to improve standards of living and promoting justice.
Service does not need to be selfless-it is driven by the rational and moral acknowledgment that everyone must do their part to maintain the project of civilization. Practically everyone vocally accepts the ideals of liberty and justice for all as virtues. To serve and make sacrifices is to turn words into actions. In becoming an Eagle Scout, I had to prove my commitment to my stated values by taking initiative on a service project.
Service and sacrifice are the foundation on which ideals are built; to maintain ideals, sacrifice is required.
Every act of service is by definition a step toward truly repaying those who have given you what you have, and thus becoming a true citizen. For all of the problems that we face today as individuals and as a people, there is much to be grateful for. We are granted our basic rights, stability, a good education, relative safety, and the opportunities afforded by a large, populous and prosperous land. There is an all too common tendency to take these advantages for granted and go about our lives ungratefully.
To pass the gifts of civilization along to future generations, service is required of us all
