7/3/2023

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal begins with Jack Miller Center President Hans Zeiger’s review of Richard Haass’s new book, “The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.” According to Zeiger, Haass, who serves as President of the Council on Foreign Relations, notes that “in the face of declining trust in our public institutions and a waning sense of shared identity as fellow citizens ... Americans need to recover a sense of obligation.” Arguing that Americans unduly focus on rights at the expense of duties and obligations, Haass rightfully “celebrates values like civility, compromise, norms, and a respect for the common good.” Zeiger praises Haass’s “concept of public good,” because it “includes a strong dependence on private character” and urges him to focus much more on the subject of “voluntarism as a component of active citizenship” in the future. Zeiger closes by writing that Haass’s book should be an important “reminder to its readers of their own obligations in our beloved republic, and of how ... we might each do our part.”

In an extended essay at National Affairs, Brenda M. Hafera argues that America’s founding principles undermined the patriarchal norms of the Old World and that an adherence to them throughout generations made women equal citizens. She writes, “Declaring ‘all men are created equal’ set America” on the course of ensuring that the nation would be “a republic of equal citizens under the law – a process that affected not only men and women, but the whole family.” Women made important contributions throughout American history “by influencing their children and husbands and promoting the vitality of civic associations.” According to Hafera, their “crucial role in this effort led Americans to recognize women as contributors to our experiment in self-government – an advancement that was itself a result of republican ideas.” Though Hafera notes that women receiving “their full civil rights and duties as equal citizens was a project of later generations,” she nevertheless argues that we should “look back with gratitude at the founding generation of men and women whose principles and actions set this development in motion.”