Rights and duties play an important part in the development of a nation or the growth of an organization. Rights on the one hand give an individual an opportunity to be a part of development process while duties on the other hand make an individual obliged to play a part in the development. As a citizen of a democratic country we all are privileged to have some fundamental rights. But, apart from these rights we also have fundamental duties which we rarely talk about. Moreover responsible citizenship is not just about enjoying the fundamental rights and performing the fundamental duties mentioned in our constitution but it is about going beyond those duties.

A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? and what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country? facts are stubborn things and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. if once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and i, and congress and assemblies, judges and governors, shall all become wolves.

thomas jefferson letter to edward carrington january 16, 1787

background and original intent

a good constitution is the greatest blessing which a society can enjoy. So said james wilson, in his oration at philadelphia on july 4, 1788, celebrating the adoption of the constitution of the united states. Wilson, who signed both the declaration of independence and the constitution, preached startlingly democratic theories more democratic than the ideas of any other delegate to the constitutional convention. Yet wilson emphasized the duties, as well as the rights, of citizens: need i infer, that it is the duty of every citizen to use his best and most unremitting endeavours for preserving it the constitution pure, healthful, and vigorous? for the accomplishment of this great purpose, the exertions of no one citizen are unimportant. Let no one, therefore harbour, for a moment, the mean idea, that he is and can be of no value to his country: let the contrary manly impression animate his soul.

Every one can, at many times, perform, to the state, useful services and he, who steadily pursues the road of patriotism, has the most inviting prospect of being able, at some times, to perform eminent ones. wilson's argument is quite as sound now as it was two centuries ago. The success of the american republic as a political structure has been the consequence, in very large part, of the voluntary participation of citizens in public affairs enlisting in the army in time of war serving on school boards taking part unpaid in political campaigns petitioning legislatures supporting the president in an hour of crisis and in a hundred other great ways, or small assuming responsibility for the common good.

The constitution has functioned well, most of the time, because conscientious men and women have given it flesh.

the premises of americans' responsibility under the constitution of 1787

the framers' first assumption was that all just authority for government comes from the people, under god not from a monarch or a governing class, but from the innumerable citizens who make up the public. The people delegate to government only so much power as they think it prudent for government to exercise. Thus, if the people are sovereign, it is the citizens' responsibility to take upon their shoulders the task of seeing that order, justice, and freedom are maintained. The framers' second assumption was that american citizens would undertake responsibility for the ordinary functioning of the civil social order and that local communities would manage their own affairs. Under their system, the roles of the various levels of government would be minimal and would not unnecessarily intrude into the day to day lives of the citizens.

In the matters which most immediately affect private life, power should remain in the hands of the citizens, or of the several states not in the possession of federal government. Americans have no official cards of identity, or internal passports, or system of national registration of all citizens obligations imposed upon citizens in much of the rest of the world. In matters of public concern, it was the original intent to keep authority as close to home as possible.