Civic duty

This is a political post, and it will surprise some.  Buckle up, Reader-land!

What is a civic duty?  As much as I would like it to be an “El Camino” version of my Honda, it’s not that.

No, it’s the contract of responsibilities between the individual and society, which incurs rights and obligations to the state and the individual.  Things like jury duty are obligations.  The right to operate a motor vehicle on public roads is a right, providing you also follow the societal laws around safety.  And before you say speed limits are dumb, remember that the law is written by people who are being extra cautious and using the worst-case scenario, and then multiply it by six.

The social contract is broken if one or both parties do not keep their respective duties.  For civilians this means jail, and for government it means change.  Please study the Declaration of Independence.

However, laws we do not like are not breaches of the social contract!  Do you hear me, Virginia?  As long as a law that is not morally obscene is passed the proper way, we have to follow the proper recourse to overturn it.  (Be honest, all the gun-grabbing bills are unconstitutional at the state and federal levels and should be challenged immediately.)  These laws are unjust but not immoral!  And as Christians, we must live in the world but not of it.

Am I saying to give up?  No, just that if these laws were immoral you should have been fighting in California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, etc.  But you didn’t wake up until it was too late.  Now you have to challenge it in the courts.

I don’t say the same for immoral laws.  Abortion, euthanasia, conscious protections, etc.  We have a moral duty to resist those, as the early church and the English martyrs showed.

I just wonder if there will be the same support for protecting unborn babies as there is for gun rights?