Virtuous Citizens Research Articles

The Historical Justification For Prohibiting Dangerous Persons From Possessing Arms

In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court deemed certain firearm regulations “presumptively lawful”—including “longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons . . . .” The Heller Court did not elaborate on why such laws were presumptively lawful, instead promising to provide a “historical justification” for such laws when a better opportunity arises. Two years later, the Court again referenced these presumptively lawful regulations in McDonald v. City of Chicago, but did not use the opportunity to elaborate on the historical basis for the regulations. Thus far—over a decade since the Heller decision—the Court has not yet provided that historical justification. In the meantime, lower courts have been inundated with challenges to these presumptively lawful measures. The federal law prohibiting felons from possessing firearms has been the most challenged law under the Second Amendment post-Heller. This Article surveys English and American history to discover what historical justification the Supreme Court was referring to. Part II examines what the Supreme Court has said about firearm prohibitions on felons. Section A explains why felon bans are presumptively lawful, Section B explains why the presumption of lawfulness is rebuttable, and Section C explains why any prohibition on felons must be rooted in history and tradition. Part III explores the history of laws prohibiting categories of people from possessing arms. Section A explores disarmament efforts throughout England’s history. England had a long tradition of disarming dangerous persons, especially those disloyal to the government. Section B surveys laws from colonial America. Consistent with English tradition, colonial disarmament efforts focused on those perceived as posing a dangerous threat, including Loyalists to the British Crown, slaves, freedmen, and Native Americans. Section C summarizes the proposals from the ratifying conventions of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. All three proposals are most reasonably read as allowing only dangerous persons to be disarmed. Section D provides examples of when prohibited persons could have their arms rights restored in the founding era. Unlike the lifetime bans that typically apply today, prohibited persons in the founding era could often regain their rights once they were no longer perceived as dangerous. Section E focuses on the nineteenth century, in which slaves, freedmen, and tramps were regulated most severely. Section F surveys the increasingly prevalent prohibitions in the twentieth century. The majority of these applied to noncitizens and are examined in Section F.1. The others applied to violent criminals and are examined in Section F.2. Part IV addresses the theory embraced by some scholars and courts that the Second Amendment was understood in the founding era to protect only “virtuous” citizens. Section A examines how the “unvirtuous” citizen theory developed despite lacking historical foundation. Section B explores historical laws that expressly permitted unvirtuous citizens to retain their arms rights. Many founders believed a virtuous citizenry was necessary for self-government, but no law ever limited the right to keep and bear arms to virtuous citizens, and no founding-era source indicated that the Second Amendment was intended to be so limited. In conclusion, this Article finds that there is no tradition of banning peaceable citizens from possessing firearms. The historical justification the Supreme Court relied on to declare felon bans “presumptively lawful” must be the tradition of disarming violent and otherwise dangerous—not merely unvirtuous—persons. Thus, prohibitions on violent felons may be presumptively lawful under Heller, but prohibitions on nonviolent felons contradict the original understanding of the Second Amendment.

The concept of gakliat tasdikat in the words of edification of Abay Kunanbayev

The article analyzes the content of the thirty-eighth word of edification of the poet, enlightener Abay Kunanbaev, the founder of the Kazakh literary language. The analysis characterizes the embroidered ideas of the poet and their role in shaping the spiritual nature of the Kazakhs. And also the semantic meaning of the borrowed words and their meaning are examined and a comparative analysis is made relative to the original. For example, yaggar, iman, ichthyhad, sungat, etc. And the authors pertinently revealed the concept of the poet, which is based on reason and science, enlightening the formation of a good character in which people have different personalities. This is because the emphasis is on the need for special love to achieve science. Through these actions, he shows how he knew his creator and the environment. The authors suggest that Abay Kunanbayev, guided by the fact that those who have acquired knowledge, can recognize the truth and always grow up to be modern people, develop a scientific worldview, be recognized as a healthy and virtuous citizen who has not lost its relevance to this day. This is because the poet’s ideas in the words of edification will remain the indelible legacy of modern society. Key words: the book of words, history of language, mutual language, truth affirmation concept, love of science, mind and science.

A Less Perfect Union.

This is a daunting time, not only in terms of our public health and our economic health but also in terms of the health of the republic. It is an old theme that any form of popular government needs virtuous citizens if it is to survive. It also needs citizens to agree on what counts as a virtue. I fear that the pandemic has shown that "We, the people" do not agree, and this shows what we already knew, that there are profound cracks in our union.

THE CITY SPEAKS: CITIES, CITIZENS, AND CIVIC DISCOURSE IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

This article investigates how civic discourse connects the virtue of citizens and the fortunes of cities in a variety of late antique and early medieval sources in the post-Roman west. It reveals how cities assume human qualities through the rhetorical technique of personification and, crucially, the ways in which individuals and communities likewise are described with civic terminology. It also analyzes the ways in which the city and the civic community are made to speak to one another at times of crisis and celebration. By examining a diverse range of sources including epideictic poetry, chronicles, hagiographies, and epigraphic inscriptions, this article addresses multiple modes of late antique and early medieval thought that utilize civic discourse. It first explores how late antique and early medieval authors employed civic discourse in non-urban contexts, including how they conceptualized the interior construction of an individual's mind and soul as a fortified citadel, how they praised ecclesiastical and secular leaders as city structures, and how they extended civic terminology to the preeminently non-urban space of the monastery. The article then examines how personified cities spoke to their citizens and how citizens could join their cities in song through urban procession. Civic encomia and invective further illustrate how medieval authors sought to unify the virtuous conduct of citizens with the ultimate fate of the city's security. The article concludes with a historical and epigraphic case study of two programs of mural construction in ninth-century Rome. Ultimately, this article argues that the repeated and emphatic exhortations to civic virtue provide access to how late antique and early medieval authors sought to intertwine the fate of the city with the conduct of her citizens, in order to persuade their audiences to act in accordance with the precepts of virtue.

SSCA, the Limits of STEM Education, and the Efficacy of Communication Education

ABSTRACTIn this address, Dr. Munsell offers his perspectives on SSCA as a welcoming community of mentors. He then moves to explain how different terministic frames describing the meaning of higher education in the 19th-Century still reside with us today, particularly when it comes to the hyper-vocational and STEM-centric aura of contemporary American Higher Education. Sharing research on job market trends, Dr. Munsell showcases the limits of STEM education and uses information from the National Association of Colleges and Employers and NCA's Learning Outcomes in Communication to illustrate how Communication Education supplies the type of Competences employers are really looking for. Moreover, Munsell argues that Communication Education trains students to be virtuous citizens and builders of egalitarian communities.

The Catharsis of the Commons

Using Aristotle’s definition of the tragedy as a metaphor, the essay interprets the tragedy of the commons to highlight the critical role and socio-political importance of the emotions of fear and pity for its resolution and for furthering personal and collective eudaimonia (good life) of and in the commons. Synthesizing the Aristotelian scholarship with pertinent contemporary literature, it presents Aristotle’s engagement with the commons, emotions and virtues, discusses the key notions of the tragedy and offers an Aristotelian rendering of the tragedy of the commons applying a dramaturgical-interpretivist approach. The emotions-driven learning process of catharsis clarifies the causality of the tragedy, motivates action, forms virtuous citizens, ‘cleans’/relieves/purifies the commons of their ills, thus, engendering their catharsis. The comparison of the Aristotelian-inspired with the contemporary institutionalist, moral and phronetic approaches reveals their commonalities and differences. The analysis suggests that emotions should be integrated into current approaches or they might be synthesized into an emotions-centered institutionalist-phronetic approach to the study and governance of the commons. Education of and in the emotions to influence the perception of commons dilemmas, values and morals, coupled with institutional arrangements grounded on phronesis and sufficiency, emerge as contemporary policy priorities. Future interdisciplinary research directions conclude the essay.

The Pedagogical Work of Vieth and GutsMuths

Abstract Introduction: Philanthropism as it evolved at the end of the 18th century in Germany wanted to break completely with the contemporary methods persisting in education, with the hegemony of classical languages, and with the study of antique authors’ works; instead, it laid emphasis on practical and useful knowledge, on teaching modern languages, on acquiring knowledge based on demonstration, and on an intimate connection to nature. The aim of philanthropist education was to train virtuous citizens who honestly pursue their ordinary profession, in whose training they assigned a central role to physical education. Purpose: In our paper, which is a part of our research exploring the appearance of the pedagogical ideas of philanthropism in Hungary, we set out to investigate the question: What was the focus of physical education in the philanthropinums? As a first step in our investigation, we give an overview of the philanthropists’ ideas regarding physical education, then we take a close look at how these ideas were put into practice in two selected institutions, namely among the walls of the philanthropinums in Dessau and Schnepfenthal, by relying on the contemporary works of Gerhard Ulrich Anton Vieth and Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths. Finally, we consider their impact in Hungary. Methods: In this study we apply the source analysis as a traditional research method in the history of education. Conclusions: The impact of philanthropism on contemporary Hungarian public education, especially in the first half of the 19th century, can be clearly detected, which can be accredited to study trips to Germany and the Hungarian translations of German works. The presence of philanthropism can also be perceived in swimming instruction. Basedow and GutsMuths initiated the instruction of swimming and lifeguarding, and the general institutionalization of swimming instruction. The impact of philanthropists could also be felt in Hungary. Károly (Carl) Csillagh’s textbook on swimming appeared in German in 1841 with the title “Der philantropische Schwimmmeister” (“The Philanthropist Swimming Instructor”). The first book on swimming in Hungarian appeared in 1842.

In Pursuit of Civility: Manners and Civilization in Early Modern England by Keith Thomas

Reviewed by: In Pursuit of Civility: Manners and Civilization in Early Modern England by Keith Thomas Robert G. Walker Keith Thomas. In Pursuit of Civility: Manners and Civilization in Early Modern England. Waltham, MA: Brandeis, 2018. Pp. xvi + 356. $95; $45 (paper). Mr. Thomas has a problem: how to write a conscientious piece of social history about a slippery term, civility, over a relatively long span. His solution is to produce an extremely well-documented study (1,690 endnotes in eighty-seven pages of small print) that records the frequent lack of linear change and the crosscurrents affecting the concept. The book seems to be written by an author who has read everything for an audience that may have read very little. As such it elicits a mixed response. A foreword by David Katz speaks of [End Page 102] "Thomas's method of blanket reading," and, like Mr. Thomas's later comment about his annotation method, seems an apology as much as an explanation. Of course, the subject is complex. "Civility" was used in various senses, foremost among them "politeness" on the one hand and "the state of being civilized" on the other. There are numerous nuances in between, as Mr. Thomas points out, in a method he calls "illustrative rather than comprehensive." He relies often on philology to make his points, which are valid and thoughtful. A small sample: "in seventeenth-century England, 'civil' people were increasingly referred to as 'civilized"'; "the notion of civilization is essentially relative; it has to have an opposite to be intelligible"; "'courtesy' … related initially to the behavior associated with the court. … It was the essential attribute of courtiers. 'Civility,' by contrast, was the virtue of citizens"; and "only in the early nineteenth century did the word 'civilization' come to be employed in the plural, first in France and only later in Britain." Mr. Thomas is aware of the hazards of this philological approach. After citing Locke, Hume, and Henry Pelham on the relationship between civility and possible forms of government, he writes, "these disagreements … reveal that 'civil' and 'barbarous' were rhetorical terms, carrying a high emotional charge, but distinctly protean and often lacking any universally agreed content." Most eye-opening is his treatment of the various ways "uncivilized" was used to justify suspending consensus social values when dealing with a foreign people, whether that people were obviously outside the bounds generally agreed on at the time as civilization, or whether it was simply convenient to construe them as outsiders, as in the case of the Irish and Scots. The Duke of Cumberland's slaughter of the Jacobites at Culloden then can be seen not as a one-time butchery but in keeping with a line of thought apparent for a century before. Still, the very slipperiness of the terms somewhat undercuts Mr. Thomas's approach. He rarely argues his points, and so his book often seems to be a listing of "one damn thing after another." (An exception is his occasional disagreement with fellow historian Norbert Elias.) By spending this time discussing Mr. Thomas's method, I do not mean to imply he is unaware of its limitations; he cautions at one point that "allowance has to be made for the context in which [contemporary] assessments were offered," and I would extend that caution to the entire text. But who except perhaps Mr. Thomas is able to evaluate the context in each case when in a randomly selected passage of three pages he refers to the statements of Richard Price, Hume, Montesquieu, Godwin, Lord Kames, Boswell, Burke, Paine, Wollstonecraft, Hobbes, Sidney Webb, John Osborne, and Cavendish? When Mr. Thomas writes the following in a discussion of the relationship of genocide to views of civilization, he perhaps unwittingly casts doubt over his entire enterprise: "In 1763 the commander-in-chief of the British army in America sanctioned a plan to eliminate hostile Indian tribes on the Pennsylvania frontier by distributing blankets infected with smallpox." His source is a 2007 study. But the "plan"—if that is what it was rather than the crazy scheme of an inferior officer—was sanctioned only after the fact and was totally ineffective. Moreover, the American academician...

The Effect Employee Commitment on Service Performance through a Mediating Function of Organizational Citizenship Behaviour Using Servqual and Collaborative Filtering Modeling: Evidence From China’s Hospitality Industry

This article Centralizes on exploring the potential the effect of employee commitment and service quality, which are the core factors that affect competitiveness in the hospitality industry. This article analyzes the impact of employee commitment on the quality of service through the intermediate function of OCB in empirical research based on integrated models and theories. This study gathered information using surveys and calculated the reliability of the Cronbach-Alpha and used questionnaires are "Working Commitment with "0.766" reliability, Podsakoff OCB "0.846" reliability, SERVQUAL quality of service "0.960" reliability. The samples used in this study were 223 employees in Guangdong hospitality industry. According to the effects of research on the attitudes and role clarity can be positive as it will extend employee engagement and effective politics, but conflict is not and cannot communicate with a commitment to politics through political commitment to extend or decrease. Component examined five unique dimensions of organizational citizenship behaviour by Oregon, including altruism, deontology, magnanimity, civility, Virtue of citizens" as a positive influence on the quality of their services and this can be improved. It is significant to develop and raise the competitiveness of the Chinese hospitality industry.

First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory by Mitch Kachun

Reviewed by: First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory by Mitch Kachun Joanne Pope Melish (bio) KEY WORDS Crispus Attucks, American Revolution, Boston Massacre, Slavery, African American First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory. By Mitch Kachun. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 308. Cloth, $29.95.) Breathes there a soul so dead as never to have heard of Crispus Attucks? Surely not today. Yet as Mitch Kachun explains in First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory, Attucks’s death was not always so familiar. Kachun traces the memory of Attucks as a named participant and, in some versions, the instigator of the 1770 event later called the Boston Massacre. Attucks was unfamiliar to most black Americans until 1840, and Bostonians did not memorialize him with a monument until 1888. Most Americans did not learn of Attucks in school books and fictional treatments until another sixty or seventy years after that. Kachun explains why Attucks’s story was variously forgotten, resurrected, embellished, invoked, or excoriated in particular moments like these in the two and a half centuries that followed his death. Most historians know the same five or six things about the actual Crispus Attucks. He was born somewhere near Natick, Massachusetts, around 1723, probably of Native and African descent, possibly the child of Nancy Peterattucks, and was probably enslaved by William Brown of Framingham. After 1750, he seems to have liberated himself in some way [End Page 340] and begun working as a seaman or dockworker around Boston. He was apparently a large man. Note the relentless ambiguity of this summary of the “facts.” The only absolute certainty in this man’s biography is that he was the first of four men who died in a confrontation with a detachment of British soldiers outside the King Street Custom House in Boston on March 5, 1770; a fifth man died a few days later of wounds sustained in that encounter. All five were interred in Boston’s Granary Burying Ground. That’s it. In the first chapter, Kachun lays out the particulars of Attucks’s origins and fatal 1770 encounter with British troops, as far as they are known or surmised. While John Adams, defense attorney for the British soldiers charged with the shootings, characterized the mob as “a rabble of negroes &c” and Attucks as the “stout mulatto” who apparently had “undertaken to be the hero of the night” (16), local newspapers portrayed the incident as an unprovoked assault on upright citizens. In this interpretation, and in the commemorations that followed for the next thirteen years, Attucks’s race, and indeed the individuality of any of the victims, disappeared; they were simply virtuous citizens who died resisting tyranny. Yet because Attucks was the only man of color among the five victims, his race and class position made it desirable for some in later generations to disparage him, others to forget him, and yet others to laud his as a noble example. Kachun traces the infinitely malleable public memory of Attucks, and the Boston Massacre itself, in eight chronologically organized chapters. For almost a century, Attucks remained virtually anonymous, and it was not until 1839 that the first surviving reference to him by an African American was recorded—Jehiel C. Beman’s characterization of him as a “colored man by the name of Airtiks” whose death was “the first blood spilt for independence in this country,” published in the Liberator (41). Led by William Cooper Nell, black activists invoked Attucks as an African American hero and patriot to support their antebellum fight for citizenship and suffrage rights. In Boston, they petitioned the state legislature of Massachusetts to erect a monument to his memory, an effort that was unsuccessful then but finally came to fruition in 1888 with biracial support. But the efforts of black activists to mobilize Attucks’s public memory to fight Jim Crow in the 1880s and 1890s, and again in the 1930s, were met with resistance by public officials who feared that lauding the ostensible hero of the Boston Massacre would [End Page 341] seem to sanction mob actions in an era characterized by working-class strikes and violence. Kachun...

“All Our Children May be Taught of God”: Sunday Schools and the Roles of Childhood and Youth in Creating Evangelical Benevolence

Merging religious history with childhood studies, this article analyzes the rise of the Sunday school movement to show how concepts of childhood, and young people themselves, helped shape early American religious culture. Religious disestablishment, republican concerns about virtue, and romanticized reconstructions of childhood led to a heightened focus on young people within late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Protestant reform movements. The resulting dissemination of Sunday schools across the country established physical and imagined communities of faith dedicated exclusively to young people. They also fostered unprecedented levels of youth religious leadership by allowing adolescents to serve as teachers, challenging inherited patterns of social and cultural authority. Sunday schools thereby became transformative and transactional spaces where young people could both shape and be shaped by the growing Protestant community. This article describes this synergistic relationship between childhood, youth, and Protestant benevolence by examining the two related educational models that emerged within the Sunday school movement in the early national period. The first, exemplified by republican-humanitarian Sunday schools founded in the late eighteenth century, emphasized literacy instruction for the purpose of creating a virtuous citizenry. The second model also aspired to create virtuous citizens, but it envisioned using Sunday schools primarily to evangelize and sanctify the nation. The increasing emphasis on evangelism produced an even more significant structural shift: the transformation of Sunday schools into child-centric institutions that facilitated youth religious leadership. This in turn helped inaugurate a period within American Christianity when institutions and ministries were designed specifically for children on mass scale, permanently altering the religious landscape and redistributing spiritual authority to more marginalized groups, including young people themselves. By revealing how age became an increasingly crucial factor in determining the shape and substance of religious experiences, this article demonstrates that ideals and anxieties about childhood helped create volunteerism, which in turn reshaped the structure of American Protestantism while simultaneously contributing to the formation of a broader child-centric culture that persists in the modern day.

Trzy razy res publica: Thomas Smith, Gasparo Contarini i Wawrzyniec Goślicki

The interest in Republican thought is on the increase again, now chiefl y thanks to the works of Quentin Skinner and the circle of so-called neo-Republicans (or civic Republicans) concentrated around Phillip Petit. They stress the peculiar perspective that Republicans have had on the state and society. This is seen in their distinctive view of freedom as the absence of domination, or attachment to the category of citizenship and the related role of civic virtues. These special characteristics justify, in their opinion, distinguishing the Republican trend of political thought (historically and now) from other positions, especially the liberal tradition. Accepting generally the above opinion, the paper draws our attention to signifi - cant differences within Republicanism itself. To do this, it cites the three conceptions of republic that were formed in the 16th century and refer to England (Sir Thomas Smith), Venice (Gasparo Contarini) and Poland (Wawrzyniec Goślicki). Although they were formed around the same time and have common roots mainly in Aristotle’s philosophy and Roman Republican ideas, each of the three perspectives views the republic from a different angle. While all three authors believe the coexistence of three elements – orderly institutions, wise law and virtuous citizens – to be crucial for any state, they rely in their deliberations on one element only. This has an impact on the way their conceptions fi nally appear and on the conclusions for the political system they draw. And so, Smith gives precedence to institutions, Contarini emphasises the key role of law and Goślicki gives primacy to virtue, concentrated in an ideal senator. Taking notice of such differences among thinkers openly admitting to an attachment to the Republican tradition should make us even more careful so as not to oversimplify it as if it were uniform and completely cohesive. Further, the awareness of such differences may provoke refl ection how justifi ed the use of the Republican banner is in respect of so different authors as, for instance, Machiavelli and Montesquieu.

Luxurious Citizens: The Politics of Consumption in Nineteenth-Century America by Joanna Cohen

Reviewed by: Luxurious Citizens: The Politics of Consumption in Nineteenth-Century America by Joanna Cohen Charlene Boyer Lewis (bio) KEY WORDS Consumption, Material culture, Trade, Economics Luxurious Citizens: The Politics of Consumption in Nineteenth-Century America. By Joanna Cohen. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. Pp. 296. Cloth, $45.00.) The roots of the patriotic American consumer run deep. As the nation developed over the years from the Revolution through the Civil War, the consumption of material goods took on new meanings that also changed the meanings of citizenship. The growth of the new republic became inextricable from the growth of capitalism and consumerism. The “citizen consumer,” as Joanna Cohen perceptively and persuasively argues, emerged out of American politics and the commercial economy, and produced vociferous debate among politicians, merchants, and the buying public. Beautifully drawing together the worlds of politics, economics, and culture (as well as of men and women), Cohen offers an insightful and compelling interpretation of how consumer desires and gratification became a foundational part of American democratic citizenship over the nineteenth century. After emerging from a revolution that rested heavily on a boycott of [End Page 719] English goods, the founders grappled with the meanings of citizenship and consumption. What role would consumerism play in the creation of an American republican identity? Could Americans stay virtuous citizens—the kind that a republic needed to succeed—and still fulfill their desires for material goods? Long-held assumptions about luxury and its accompanying corruption made many republican policymakers wary of establishing a vigorous system of free trade—what many Federalists and merchants wanted. As Cohen skillfully shows, numerous politicians and economic thinkers believed that the American consumer—as well as the American manufacturer—needed to be protected from the vagaries and deceit of free trade, especially from abroad. During the early years of the new republic, the patriotic citizen consumer was defined as one who purchased carefully and cautiously, buying only affordable luxuries preferably from domestic manufacturers, instead of foreign ones. “Self-sacrifice” became “the prime expression of civic virtue” (38). Yet the flagrant violations first of Jefferson’s Embargo and then of the Non-Intercourse Act in the early 1800s made clear that few American consumers were willing to forgo British goods for the good of the nation. Homespun and pottery, no matter how symbolically patriotic, could in no way fulfill Americans’ desire for fashionable British silks and china. After focusing upon the larger, national perspective in the early chapters, Cohen shifts (somewhat abruptly) to a closer investigation of the commercial players—the auctioneers, merchants, and political economists—who helped transform the meanings of consumption and citizenship during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. This transformation was not smooth and produced fierce debates in both the commercial and political arenas. By the 1830s, Cohen concludes, “the quarrel over consumers’ rights to purchase had left a lasting impression on cultural and political understandings of . . . what the [American] consumer might expect in terms of protections and freedoms” (83). As the United States’ economy took off and the nation seemed more stable, growing clamors for free trade and unfettered consumption came from both the commercial and consuming sectors. And politicians responded, recognizing that consumer gratification—now seen as the right to buy anything anyone wanted—had become a key part of American national identity. The Jeffersonian ideas of political economy had vanished. During this era of prosperity, the patriotic consumer had been transformed from one who shunned luxuries for the good of the nation to one who purchased as many as he or she could afford for the good of the nation. [End Page 720] The taxes on and customs duties from this increased consumption would bring wealth, not danger, to the nation. While her discussions of auction houses, tariffs, and political economists bog down a bit, Cohen really shines when she turns to the “imagined community” of middle-class consumers who believed by the 1840s that “they were entitled” to the “pleasures” of shopping “as American citizens” (150–51). Not surprisingly, citizen consumers came to be equated with middle-class Americans, those who could afford to purchase the things they desired, but who would do so in a...

The Virtuous, the Critical and the Trustworthy: Citizen Ideals and Forms of Democratic Participation

A vibrant democratic society requires continuous innovation to actualize and encourage democratic ideals through participation, but no universal answers exist as to which kinds of participation are best suited to achieve this. This article demonstrates that different types of participation correlate with different citizen ideals, implying that the remedies to democratic deficits depend on which ideals need to be strengthened. Citizen survey data is used to examine the relationships between two types of citizen participation – in voluntary associations and workplaces – and three empirical citizen ideals: the virtuous citizen, the critical citizen and the trustworthy citizen. The results suggest that voluntary associations make space for all three ideals, while workplace participation tends to be characterized specifically by the critical citizen's ideal of reason‐giving and critical reflection. The article ends by discussing the implications of these results: new democratic designs should be more effective if tailored to address context‐dependent weaknesses in democratic practices.

The Virtuous Citizen: Regimes and Audiences

The Virtuous Citizen: Regimes and Audiences

Police Officers’ Attitudes Toward Citizens in China

Although a substantial number of studies have examined public attitudes toward the police, a relatively thin line of research has assessed police attitudes toward the citizenry in China. Using survey data collected from a sample of approximately 200 Chinese police officers, the current study examined the effects of police officers’ demographic characteristics, socialization and experience factors, and role orientations on officers’ attitudes toward citizen virtue, citizen cooperation with the police, and citizen input in police work. Results indicated that background and experience characteristics were ineffective in predicting the three aspects of officer attitudes toward citizens. Crime-fighting and service orientations were found to be related to officers’ attitudes toward the citizenry. Findings of this study enhance our understanding of police occupational attitudes in China and provide valuable implications for policy and future research.

Citizenship, Community, and Ethics: Forrest Gump as a Moral Exemplary

"Forrest Gump" bas been extraordinarily popular with the ordinary citizens and one of the reasons is self-evident: it presents a Jeffersonian confidence in the moral stalwartness of the yeoman citizenry that runs counter to some of the current approaches in ethics. The film celebrates a basic decency and a common sense that are accessible to all. No real or imagined superiority is required for one to partake. The film is not only popular but also populist in its assertion of the primacy of the ordinary citizen within this regime. In a political climate that now finds the tenure of elected officials uncertain and the legitimacy of public administration suspect, the visible portrayal of exemplary citizen virtues may serve as a timely reminder to all that, more so than any other regime, a democratic republic is ultimately and fundamentally dependent on the core values possessed by its citizenry.

Climate citizenship in the European union: environmental citizenship as an analytical concept

ABSTRACTThe concept of environmental citizenship is employed as an analytical tool to determine what kind of climate citizenship(s) the citizen-directed material in the European Commission’s climate change campaign is constructing. The research material is read, analysed and interpreted through elements attached to environmental citizenship: the realm of activity, political space, depth of activity, level of activity, citizen virtues, citizen rights and responsibilities and conception of the environment. The results suggest that climate citizenship is considered mainly as a private sphere activity performed by individuals and consists mainly in small adjustments in daily life. Climate citizens are motivated to everyday-life mitigation by personal benefit, greenhouse gas emissions and preserving natural resources.

Does Democracy Require Metaphysics? A Review of Franklin Gamwell's Religion among We the People

Does Democracy Require Metaphysics? A Review of Franklin Gamwell's <i>Religion among We the People</i>

Cultivating cyber-phronesis: a new educational approach to tackle cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is a pervasive and troubling moral concern for teachers, schools, parents and pupils. As children and young people in England are now more likely to be bullied online than face-to-face, this article explores if there is a need to rethink traditional educational approaches to dealing with the issue. The article starts with a critique of the current dominant approaches to tackling cyberbullying in schools, which draw predominantly on deontological and utilitarian moral philosophies. It then details what an Aristotelian character education approach to cyberbullying would consist of. At its heart is a requirement to enable children and young people to become digitally virtuous citizens, through the development of cyber-phronesis. The article concludes with a description of moral educational interventions that would increase the likelihood of children and young people making both ‘good’ and ‘wise’ choices when online.