{"id":6083,"date":"2011-01-28T09:08:16","date_gmt":"2011-01-28T09:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=6083"},"modified":"2011-01-28T09:08:16","modified_gmt":"2011-01-28T09:08:16","slug":"the-good-citizen-and-the-good-person","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=6083","title":{"rendered":"the good citizen and the good person"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(In Gainesville, FL, en route to Orlando)&#8211;Yesterday, as I guest-taught a University of Florida class on &#8220;redefining citizenship,&#8221; several questions arose that I found interesting. Here are the questions, with answers that the students suggested (or that I have added myself):<\/p>\n<p>1. A life of very active civic engagement and commitment is &#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>a. No better than any other life, as long as each life meets some basic ethical standards such as not violating just laws.<\/p>\n<p>b. A good life, but no better than several other good lives, such as a life devoted to caring for family or creating art.<\/p>\n<p>c. Equivalent to a good life. If you devote yourself to art or to God (for example), you are doing it for the good of the world, so you are civically engaged.<\/ul>\n<p>2. If you are a resident of the People&#8217;s Republic of China today &#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>a. You can be a good person and lead a good life, but you cannot be a good citizen, because that means exercising democratic rights and powers, which do not exist. You are not a citizen; you are a subject.<\/p>\n<p>b. You can and should be a citizen of China as a democracy. Since China is not a democracy, you are a good citizen to the extent that you fight the current regime in favor of democracy.<\/p>\n<p>c. Many people in China are good citizens. That means that they promote the common good by serving others, joining groups, fighting corruption, and supporting the Rule of Law.<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(In Gainesville, FL, en route to Orlando)&#8211;Yesterday, as I guest-taught a University of Florida class on &#8220;redefining citizenship,&#8221; several questions arose that I found interesting. Here are the questions, with answers that the students suggested (or that I have added myself): 1. A life of very active civic engagement and commitment is &#8230; a. No [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}