little reminder from the French revolution....

[tocqueville]

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen from the Constitution of the Year I (1793)


1. The aim of society is the common welfare. Government is instituted in order to guarantee to man the enjoyment of his natural and imprescriptible rights.

2. These rights are equality, liberty, security, and property.

3. All men are equal by nature and before the law.

4. Law is the free and solemn expression of the general will; it is the same for all, whether it protects or punishes; it can command only what is just and useful to society; it can forbid only what is injurious to it.

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8. Security consists in the protection afforded by society to each of its members for the preservation of his person, his rights, and his property.

9. The law ought to protect public and personal liberty against the oppression of those who govern.

10. No one ought to be accused, arrested, or detained except in the cases determined by law and according to the forms that it has prescribed. Any citizen summoned or seized by the authority of the law, ought to obey immediately; he makes himself guilty by resistance.

11. Any act done against man outside of the cases and without the forms that the law determines is arbitrary and tyrannical; the one against whom it may be intended to be executed by violence has the right to repel it by force.

12. Those who may incite, expedite, subscribe to, execute or cause to be executed arbitrary legal instruments are guilty and ought to be punished.

13. Every man being presumed innocent until he has been pronounced guilty, if it is thought indispensable to arrest him, all severity that may not be necessary to secure his person ought to be strictly repressed by law.

14. No one ought to be tried and punished except after having been heard or legally summoned, and except in virtue of a law promulgated prior to the offense. The law which would punish offenses committed before it existed would be a tyranny: the retroactive effect given to the law would be a crime.

15. The law ought to impose only penalties that are strictly and obviously necessary: the punishments ought to be proportionate to the offense and useful to society.

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30. Public functions are necessarily temporary; they cannot be considered as distinctions or rewards, but as duties.

31. The offenses of the representatives of the people and of its agents ought never to go unpunished. No one has the right to claim for himself more inviolability than other citizens.

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34. There is oppression against the social body when a single one of its members is oppressed: there is oppression against each member when the social body is oppressed.

35. When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people and for each portion of the people the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.

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whole text here : http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/297/

this constitution was never applied, because of the Terror. The text above has though constitutional value as a reference in the present French constitution...

[sui generis]

1. some thoughts

12. Those who may incite, expedite, subscribe to, execute or cause to be executed arbitrary legal instruments are guilty and ought to be punished.

13. Every man being presumed innocent until he has been pronounced guilty, if it is thought indispensable to arrest him, all severity that may not be necessary to secure his person ought to be strictly repressed by law.

these are in conflict.

You know, I would add something to our own civics education. That every person born here is given a CHOICE to be American or something else. Don't you think the competition for principle in government would be healthy if that choice HAD to be made on every child's 18th birthday?

I had to make such a choice, and I still say to America don't take my citizenship for granted.

[tocqueville]

2. some answers

1) the two paragraphs are not necessarily in conflict. This is translated from 17th century French and wouldn't be written that way today. What I understand, being reading the original is that §12 means that it is ALWAYS wrong to do something "arbitrary" (meaning dictatorial) and that it should always lead to punishment, can't be pardoned. But of course you have to be proven guilty first.

2) I must say I don't really understand the point with your second question. I guess you became American later on and not at birth. I don't see why it would make a difference. Many European countries allow immigrants to vote at least in local elections, based on the principle "if you pay taxes as a resident, you ought to have a right to express your opinion". I know that Sweden has granted immigrants the right to vote in certain referendums. This is debated and the trend today is to grant more and more "voting rights" to foreign residents contributing to society on a long-term basis, in the waiting for the granting of citizenship. Besides a lot of Europeans live in another European country and it's quite pointless to change citizen ship, specially when you live in the same Union.

But the general opinion here is if you become a citizen it gives you rights but also duties. One of the duties is to change the society for the better, in the little way you can contribute. Of course if somebody has completely lost faith in one's country, it's not easy...

[sui generis]

3. on citizenship

While citizenship bestows rights and duties, it does not and should not bestow a loss of choice. If that were true, the waves of immigration that built this country could not have happened. Many of those immigrants came here to escape tyranny that no amount of "duty" to their country could change. Many came here for opportunities that the limited rights in their countries could never afford.

We somehow think that being American is the ultimate goal. I believe that if countries had to actively compete in standard of living, income, choice, opportunity, and personal freedoms, compete for the best of us, it would uplift all of us. There would always be Afghanistans and Talibans, but why would any person who wants to have a stable healthy family want to live in a country with no public healthcare, with unregulated pharma costs, with unregulated energy, with a growing Christian Taliban movement, declining public education standards and funding, and with a corrupt and easily corruptible political structure, with no accountability in its electoral process, with blind allegiance to a blind presidency, with a media as profoundly stupid as ours, with no unpaid access to higher education, a putrid obsession with what women and gays do with their own bodies and lives, union busting, environment raping, wildlife hunting, warmongering country?

Other countries have modern and sometimes BETTER constitutions than the constitution of the land of the free! Why should I be obligated to remain American if there are better opportunities elsewhere? I don't mind committing "duty", even draft military service, to a country that I believe in, but the country that I believe in would mobilize military not primarily for preemptive war but for peace, and emergencies and natural disasters.

So my point is, if at the age of 18 you were given a choice between a growing number of countries who would agree to provide a college education and jobs in exchange for your citizenship, don't you think that those countries would all be engaged in raising their standards of living, to attract the best and the brightest? This is a purely rhetorical exercise however. In reality, what I have at my disposal is to decide whether the burden of continuing to be American exceeds the benefit of being American. We all have forgotten how our ancestors got here - they made those decisions and marshalled whatever resources they could to get here.

Duty - there's a discussion. Is it discharged by paying your taxes and participating in the political process or is there some vague "future debt" of duty that can never be discharged. At what point is effort at effecting positive change in s political system better used in a different political system? Who establishes what that "duty" is and when it can be discharged. I am not owned by my citizenship. My taxes and voting record are current. My participation in the political process is excessive. I've done my time, just working extra credit now.