Terry Scambray – Defining terms is always a good place to begin a conversation and Victor Davis Hanson’s The Dying Citizen. How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America (Basic Books) weaves a rich definition of citizenship into his discussion of the current threats to this profoundly Western idea.
The idea of citizenship originated in the 5th-century B.C. Greek city states, the concept being nourished by the likes of one Alkidamas, who wrote, “Nature has made no man a slave.” This was in profound contrast to the rigid stratification that most all societies then and most non-western societies still maintain: top-down social systems wherein certain privileges are awarded to the favored few by regnant earthly powers as opposed to the God-given, non-negotiable, inherent rights citizens in the West enjoy. Continue reading