“Citizen: The individual is essentially a citizen.
This is reality inherited from Athens. We have little choice but to accept it since democracy cannot function in any other way. It is possible to hop along in a one-legged manner with citizens voting from time to time but refusing to participate and being denied most of their obligations. The result is a superficial, even dishonest, system and a population constantly dissatisfied with itself.
If the individual is not first a citizen, then the obligations and privileges which go with that status are effectively lost and the person ceases, to all intents and purposes, to be an individual.”
Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
