Published November 1994 — Download PDF of the original newspaper column
Byrd's-Eye View By U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd An Update on the Idea Of American Citizenship
Too often in our contemporary era, we use the word "citizen" without realizing its deep meaning. In the Book of Acts, in the New Testament, as the Apostle Paul is about to be scourged like a commoner, he startled the authorities in Jerusalem by declaring that he was legally a Roman citizen, and demanded that he be tried in Rome. That demand -- the legal right of a Roman citizen to be tried in Rome -set the local officials into a panic, for Roman citizenship in the Ancient World bore with it a value of which few of us today can conceive. Perhaps only one other citizenship in world history can parallel the prestige of Roman citizenship, and that is American citizenship. Indeed, in many ways today, American citizenship is the equivalent of Ancient Roman citizenship. Because of its value, annually, thousands seek illegal entrance into the United States, largely because of the Privileges that they perceive as belonging to Americans. Unfortunately, most people do not grasp that American citizenship is not only about Privilege, but even more so about response. To some people, American citizenship means being able to do whatever one wants to do. But as perhaps no men have in human history, our Founding Fathers understood that there was a price that could be exacted for the political creation that they had brought into existence. They stated that price in the Declaration of Independence: "... We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." Based on that model, American citizenship is not doing what one wants to do, but doing what one ought to do. Best understood, the essence of American citizenship is responsibility -- responsibility for one's own behavior, responsibility for one's own family, responsibility for one's own community, and responsibility for one's own country. As we move toward the close of this century and further into the third century of our life as a nation, I hope that increasing numbers of West Virginians and their fellow Americans will actively nurture an-inner sense of citizen responsibility, commitment, and dedication, without which this "last, best hope of earth" -as Abraham Lincoln described our Nation -- might be lost. November 2, 1994