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22817 | Citizenship involves a group of mutually supporting rights, which create community and equality |
Full Idea: The idea of citizenship is that rights support each other. Protective and welfare rights provide a basis for a political role. This underpins a sense of membership, and an obligation to provide welfare. Rights confer equal status and self-respect. | |||
From: David Miller (Community and Citizenship [1989], 3) | |||
A reaction: A helpful eludation of what a richer concept of citizenship than mere membership might look like. Communitarians have a different concept of rights from that of liberals. |
22816 | Socialists reject nationality as a false source of identity |
Full Idea: The socialist tradition has been overwhelmingly hostile to nationality as a source of identity, usually regarding it merely as an artificially created impediment to the brotherhood of man. | |||
From: David Miller (Community and Citizenship [1989], 2) | |||
A reaction: I have some sympathy with this, especially when nationalism is expressed in terms of enemies, but the question of what community a person can plausibly identify with is difficult. We start in hunter gather tribes of several hundred. |