Challenges of Liberal Citizenship
At the heart of America's founding reside notions of liberal citizenship. While the founding fathers of the United States can be perceived to have met the theoretical challenges of their day, how do contemporary citizens go about identifying and embracing their own? Far from being a solely American issue, these challenges present an array of difficult concepts that apply worldwide, ones that must be adjusted to modern cultural, political, intellectual and social contexts.
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Definitions
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The first challenge to the liberal citizen is to see through a confusion of identities. This confusion stems in part from the contemporary usage of the term 'liberal,' which tends to be associated with a political leaning. The challenge for contemporary citizen is to accept that identifying oneself as being a liberal citizen should be, at least to an extent, an apolitical statement, not one that further polarizes dominant political platforms of conservative vs. liberal. The American "culture wars" exacerbate the identity formations that lead to the association of liberal citizenship with a political party rather than a true understanding of the definition.
Culture Wars
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Beginning in the 1970s, Americans experienced culture wars. The underlying premise of these so-called wars was that right- and left-wing politics were not only irreconcilable, but split American culture in half irretrievably. The challenge to the citizen is that this view hinders them from those considering the opposite political stance, making it more difficult to perceive them as equally responsible and intelligent fellow citizens. It makes it harder to believe that those with opposing political leanings possess similar values, life goals or loyalty and sentiment for the country. It also allows for a dissected conceptualization of American culture to flourish rather than permitting the citizen to see the political landscape as diverse and stimulating.
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Cultural Chauvinism
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Another challenge to liberal citizenship is presented by its own internal logic. Over several centuries of development, liberal notions of citizenship and society have held a firm faith in values of modernization, capitalism, secularization and an Enlightenment ideal of reason. These values can prove challenging when citizens encounter new citizens --- such as immigrants --- who hail from areas of the world with less investment in these suppositions of historical progress. The challenge is that it becomes harder to accept these newcomers as full citizens due to the fact that their cultural positions are so much less modern. In other words, they may only appear as citizens on paper, not in culture. Thus, liberal citizens must take a proactive stance in accepting, welcoming and helping these individuals transition into society as well as in expanding their preconceptions of what cultural citizenship and inclusion mean in liberal society.
Public Debate
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Several prominent scholars, including Noam Chomsky and Jurgen Habermas, have stated that public debate and exchange is the greatest necessity for citizens. However, each has argued in his own way that the heyday of public debate has given way to a commercialization of media that delivers prefabricated opinion and ideas to the citizens that they readily consume. The challenge becomes to break the bonds of a private consumption of ideas and enter into new public spaces where substantive exchange can occur. The Internet provides such an opportunity in the views of some, where forums and blogs instantly unite similare and dissimilar opinions, offering a new vibrancy to public opinion through electronic access.
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