This public nature manifests itself in two
ways. The first is that the good citizen is a
public-spirited person who places the interests
of the community ahead of personal
interests. Such a person will recognize that
citizenship is a matter of responsibilities as
much as rights, and the good citizen
will discharge these responsibilities when
called upon to do so – from the day-to-day
demands of obeying traffic laws and respecting
the rights of others to the more onerous
burdens of paying taxes and providing military
(or some alternative) service. The
second way in which this commitment to the
public good manifests itself is in civic
involvement. Good citizens will undertake
public responsibilities when called upon, as
with jury duty, but they will not always wait
for others to issue the call. Instead, they will
take an active part in public affairs. They
need not be ‘political junkies’ who have
little interest in any other area of life; they
may even share Oscar Wilde’s concern that
‘socialism [or any political cause] takes too
many evenings’. But the good citizen will
not think that an occasional evening devoted
to public affairs is one too many, nor that
politics is a nuisance to be avoided or a spectacle
to be witnessed. Politics is the public’s
business, and the good citizen, according to
the republican view, will try to play a wellinformed
and public-spirited part in the conduct
of this business.