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Citizenship Midterm - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Allen emphasizes the importance of using language effectively (which is why it's important to use the right word to describe this relationship)
        
        "The Declaration also conveys another lesson of paramount importance. It is this: language is one of the most potent resources each of us has for achieving our own political empowerment."
      - Maybe we can treat this analogy as an ideal, but it doesn't reflect the current reality
      - Also implies that both parties are compromising (i.e. there are pros and cons for each)
      - It's problematic to think of rights as something that can be traded or bargained for
        
        "Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration ... . Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs" (UDHR)
    - - People don't really "consent" to the bargain because there are too many barriers to leaving the bargain (Arendt)
      - Socrates sees himself bound to the bargain, but the way he talks about it shows how unbalanced the relationship is between citizen and government (Crito)
        
        "The city treated us unjustly and did not decide the case properly?"
        
        "Socrates, did we agree on this, we and you, to honor the decisions that the city makes?"
        
        "The homeland is deserving of more honor and reverence and worship than your mother and father and all of your other ancestors? And is held in higher esteem both by the gods and by men of good sense?"
        
        "Whoever remains with us, having observed how we decide lawsuits and take care of other civic matters, we claim that this man by his action has now made an agreement with us to do what we command him to do,"
        
        "You are doing what the most despicable slave would do, trying to run away contrary to the contract and the agreement by which you agreed to be governed by us."
        
        "The duties we incur as family members are not chosen; they arise because we have a certain place in an existing group" (Shklar)
        
        "Socrates has given what is called “tacit consent”—that is, he may not have signed a contract with the city, but by living and working there all his life when he could have left he indicated as clearly as possible that he had accepted its laws and procedures" (Shklar"
    - - When US Patriots protested for change (negotiate the bargain), the government ignored them (Douglass)
        
        "They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference"
        
        "They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny."
      - Thinking of it as a a tradeoff/bargain makes us think we have to choose between equality and liberty (Allen)
        
        "Because we have accepted the view that there is a trade-off between equality and liberty, we think we have to choose."
        
        "Political philosophers have taught us to think that there is an inherent tension between liberty and equality, that we can pursue egalitarian commitments only at the expense of governmental intrusions that reduce liberty."
      - When Black people tried to negotiate, they ended up with "separate but equal" (Allen)
        
        "Arrested, he pursued his defense all the way to the Supreme Court, which in 1896 upheld the Louisiana law and entrenched legal segregation, an imposition of inequality whose effects reverberate to this day."
        
        "The goal of segregation was to secure the domination of people of color. Its purpose and its necessary consequence were inequality."
        
        "The Declaration provided tools for liberating some and
        dominating others."
    - - Black people are not offered the same privileges in this bargain, and they have little power to negotiate their side of the bargain (Douglass)
        
        "I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common."
        
        "What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim."
        
        "By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been Page 9 of 15 nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form."
        
        Note that Douglass says "fellow citizens"
        
        "Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport."
        
        "Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties), is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen."
        
        "I will, ... in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America!"
      - Socrates suffered injustice because he saw himself bound to the bargain (Crito)
        
        "He does seem to be saying that under no circumstances is it ever right to disobey the laws of one’s country, even if they result in an unjust verdict of death" (Shklar)
        
        "is it ever right to let a city or an individual be unjust without doing something to stop it? Even if it happens to be you who is being treated unjustly?" (Shklar)