Are you really a citizen?

[Brickjectivity]

Talking about the basis of the authority of government and citizenship. Should the gov. derive its authority from its citizens, or should it grant them rights and authority as needed? Does it make any practical difference, and what makes a person a true citizen? Guns? Voting? Morality? Social welfare? No welfare? No guns? No voting? Church? Documents? I'll start off by putting forward an opinion.

Suppose your government has cameras everywhere, has power to do anything to your identity and financial records, documents or whatever and has complete control of your life and you have no way of intervening except by a peaceful protest. You can protest, but there is risk that you might offend someone and get into trouble. Are you really a citizen? I suggest in that case you are not really. You work for the government in that case, and you live by the government and it defines what you are.

The opposite is that you have privacy, have control of your records, control of your identity and have a means of defending yourself from your government. Now you are a citizen, but can you still have a government that way? I would think so. Some people would disagree. Is such a system doomed to spiral into malfunction and chaos?

 

[BSM1]

Talking about the basis of the authority of government and citizenship. Should the gov. derive its authority from its citizens, or should it grant them rights and authority as needed? Does it make any practical difference, and what makes a person a true citizen? Guns? Voting? Morality? Social welfare? No welfare? No guns? No voting? Church? Documents? I'll start off by putting forward an opinion.

Suppose your government has cameras everywhere, has power to do anything to your identity and financial records, documents or whatever and has complete control of your life and you have no way of intervening except by a peaceful protest. You can protest, but there is risk that you might offend someone and get into trouble. Are you really a citizen? I suggest in that case you are not really. You work for the government in that case, and you live by the government and it defines what you are.

The opposite is that you have privacy, have control of your records, control of your identity and have a means of defending yourself from your government. Now you are a citizen, but can you still have a government that way? I would think so. Some people would disagree. Is such a system doomed to spiral into malfunction and chaos?

Do you mean even more so than it is now?

 

[Rival]

No, in the UK I am what Her Majesty calls "a subject".

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

Talking about the basis of the authority of government and citizenship. Should the gov. derive its authority from its citizens, or should it grant them rights and authority as needed? Does it make any practical difference, and what makes a person a true citizen? Guns? Voting? Morality? Social welfare? No welfare? No guns? No voting? Church? Documents? I'll start off by putting forward an opinion.

Suppose your government has cameras everywhere, has power to do anything to your identity and financial records, documents or whatever and has complete control of your life and you have no way of intervening except by a peaceful protest. You can protest, but there is risk that you might offend someone and get into trouble. Are you really a citizen? I suggest in that case you are not really. You work for the government in that case, and you live by the government and it defines what you are.

The opposite is that you have privacy, have control of your records, control of your identity and have a means of defending yourself from your government. Now you are a citizen, but can you still have a government that way? I would think so. Some people would disagree. Is such a system doomed to spiral into malfunction and chaos?

This is a wonderful question! The kind I love to spend hours discussing over beer and pizza. Unfortunately, I think it takes at least a one-semester course in political science to even begin to do it justice.
The US is one of the few nations founded on the idea that the government is created as an agreement between the citizens. The legal basis in the US is that We the People grant through the Constitution very limited authority to the federal government, and through the state constitutions, limited but somewhat broader powers to the state governments, but at all times retain our individual autonomy. In practice, many (and in my experience, it does seem to be most) American citizens think that the government grants rights and privileges to the citizens and other residents, not that the citizens grant powers to government. Part of this is a problem of inadequate education in civics and history, and part is a broad distaste for the generally really ugly process of creating public policies in a democratic system, where people's values regularly conflict.

 

[icehorse]

It's clear to me that government should be in service to the people. It's also clear that that's not today's reality.

While I'm not a fan of guns, I have to say that there is some merit to the idea that our "leaders" might be held in check a bit given the knowledge that the people are armed.

The third - perhaps most crucial player - in this dance is the corporation. It seems REALLY clear that more and more the people are in the service of the corporations. Argh!

 

[ChristineES]

What the OP describes sounds a bit like the book "1984".

 

[Twilight Hue]

What the OP describes sounds a bit like the book "1984".

Or modern day Britain, although it's massive surveillance network may or may not be as nefarious as it's made out to be.

I always took citizenship as being the place where you are born.

 

[Flankerl]

Uhm in a lot of countries its meaningless whether you were born there or not.

Jus Soli =/= Jus Sanguinis

 

[icehorse]

I think a comparison with 1984 is apt. This is not about the technical details of the bureaucratic view of "citizenship", it's about the healthy vs. unhealthy relationships between governments and people. I would say that it's also about what people can do when governments need to be reined in.