Civic Responsibilities and Individual Rights essays

Civic Responsibilities and Individual Rights essays Are our civic responsibilities as important as our individual rights? In a politically liberal society no issue can be more important than what amount of attention should be devoted, to our duties as members of a society or our own individual rights and liberties. Each individual, their surrounding society and the government responsible for overseeing them must ask this question. Which of these spheres should be granted more devotion, the society or our own individual selves. Individualism became an issue when we as people began increasingly to demand more individual freedom and started to place more value on self-chosen individual achievement over mandated national achievement. Ever since these ideas were formed into governmental ideology, as John Locke first did, conceptions of individual and civil rights and duties have come into conflict in matters of public policy. They have not so much conflicted on the grounds of their incompatibility. More frequently they have caused disputes as to where the respective boundaries of each should lie, and/or w hich should be given greater respect by people and their governments. Before continuing I would like to state that this is not an important issue in all societies, rather it is the issue of liberal societies, almost always democratic ones. The issue as I address it in this paper is one based on ideas almost, but not completely, unique to the western world, Europe and the Americas. Here I will inspect the American perspective. Several issues arise whenever attempting to address the question at hand. The Most important the issue is that of rights and duties. What are rights and duties? Are they related? What are the different kinds of rights that exist in a Liberal society, which ones are more important, and who should be given these rights? What determines eligibility for receiving these various rights, how does this relate to the issue of equality? One must first address ...