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citizenship

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

American Dream I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans. Donald Trump © 2016 Kwiple.com
Citizenship Citizenship in our time is about how you spend your attention. Tim Wu [2018] © 2021 Kwiple.com
Citizenship Citizenship is an office, and that office has duties. The duties include being informed about what is going on around you, and what is stopping Americans from knowing what is going on around them is the cascade, the torrent, the Nile River of dark money that has begun to flow into our democracy since Citizens United. Sheldon Whitehouse, January 19, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Citizenship  … citizenship is one of what W. B. Gallie has termed “essentially contested concepts.” Many of the most studied concepts in the social sciences can be classified as “essentially contested” because there is no settled consensus on their specific meanings – their essence – and they do not lend themselves to easy definition. Elizabeth F. Cohen and Cyril Ghosh, Citizenship  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Citizenship Even though citizenship is commonly misunderstood as a categorical and binary concept (one either is or is not a citizen), in reality, one experiences citizenship as a gradient or slope. Thus, depending on context, one might be said to have more or less of it. Elizabeth F. Cohen and Cyril Ghosh, Citizenship  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Citizenship [For] the ancient Greeks political participation formed an intrinsic part of citizenship. To enjoy the promise of civic equality that the status of citizenship holds out, all citizens had to play their part in the political process. Otherwise, instead of a situation of ruling and being ruled in turn, a citizen would simply be ruled. Indeed, our word 'idiot' comes from the Greek idiotes , a term used to describe someone who concentrates entirely on their private affairs to the neglect of the public realm. Richard Bellamy, Citizenship: A Very Short Introduction © 2019 Kwiple.com
Citizenship In a 2019 survey, only 40 percent of Americans were able to pass the test that all applicants for U.S. citizenship must take, which asks questions like “Who did the United States fight in World War II?” and  “We elect a President for how many years?” The only state in which a majority passed was Vermont. George Packer, Atlantic Monthly, March 10, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Citizenship Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn't need any legislation; you wouldn't need any amendments to the Constitution; you wouldn't be faced with civil-rights filibustering Washington, D.C., right now. Malcolm X, speech in Cleveland, Ohio, April 3, 1964 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Consumerism The culture of consumerism exerts far more influence on the thinking and behavior of Americans than what I'll call a culture of citizenship. Robert A. Dahl, On Political Equality © 2017 Kwiple.com
Cosmopolitanism Should Americans display as much concern about Bolivians or Uzbeks as they do about their own citizenry? Maybe they should do so in some ideal world, but they simply don't. Questions about what a nation should or should not do are inevitably grounded in an existing common groundwork of concern. John Judis, The Nationalist Revival © 2020 Kwiple.com
Democracy Democratic citizenship requires  a degree of empathy, insight, and kindness that demands a great deal of all of us. There are easier ways to live. Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works © 2023 Kwiple.com
Freedom Across the country, we are seeing sharp new limits on the rights and privileges of Americans. And despite a national mythology that ties the threat of tyranny to the machinations of a distant, central government, the actual threat to American freedom is coming from the states. … The plan … is to shrink and degrade the very notion of national citizenship and to leave us, once again, at the total mercy of the states. It is to place fundamental questions of political freedom and bodily autonomy into the hands of of our local bullies and petty tyrants, whose whims they call “freedom,” whose urge to dominate they call “liberty.” Jamelle Bouie, New York Times, May 2, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Immigration Justice permits us to do less for would-be immigrants than we are required to do for citizens. But less is not nothing. David Miller, Strangers in Our Midst © 2018 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Require the US government to publicly honor 1,000 ordinary citizens each year, such a whistleblowers, public servants, scientists, artists and journalists, for their contributions to the common good  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Resisters say In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do. Timothy Snyder, Lesson 1, about anticipatory obedience, in On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Citizenship for sale! c Green cards for as low as $500,000 No questions about the money No military service required No lining up behind the hoi polloi Unmarried kids under 21 get cards too c Act fast! c Limited to 10,000 buyers per year © 2016 Kwiple.com
 
Voting rights To the extent that a citizen's right to vote is debased, he is that much less a citizen. Earl Warren, in Reynolds v. Sims © 2021 Kwiple.com