Rhetorical Citizenship
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What is Rhetorical Citizenship? The definition that is in our syllabus says that it is the ability of individuals to communicate their needs, interests, and values in order to identify and solve public problems. In Lippmanns “The Phantom Public” he describes a good citizen as one who is omni competent, or all knowing. He thinks that the ideal role of a citizen is one where they are aware of everything that is going on in the world and they know enough about that problem or situation that he can express a well thought out opinion. The problem Lippmann has with this idea is that the average person is to busy with there everyday lives to care of have enough time to deal with the problems of the world. That is why we elect people to take care of these problems. One of Lippmanns thoughts about this is that he says that because people are too busy with their lives to meddle in government affairs they align themselves with a person or group of people who best share there ideas or values. Instead of making the decisions themselves they just elect the group that best identifies with their thoughts and let them deal with the problem. And if they make the wrong desions then come next election they align themselves with a new group or person. Lippmann believes that the role of a citizen should be to be well informed about government affairs but he knows that they cannot be so they should just find the group of people or person with the ideals they have and to elect them to deal with the problems and they can just go about there everyday lives and not have to worry about the problems.
Lippman describes the level of participation in the area of public affairs as a play. “The public will arrive in the middle of the third act and will leave before the last curtain, having stayed just long enough perhaps to decide who is the hero and who the villain is.” What hes saying is that the public doesnt really care about the problem they just want to know who is good and who is bad so that they can make a desion as to who they will align with to solve the problem. Theyre not too interested in the problem itself; they are too busy with their own lives to care about all this other stuff. According to Lippmann this idea of citizenship is one that works but it is not he “ideal” idea of citizenship. Lippmanns “ideal” democracy is one where the people are involved in every decision and know enough to be an omin-competent citizen. This “ideal” democracy that he has is just that, “ideal. He knows that it cannot and wont work because of the way the people are. They are to busy and not interested in the problems. That is why he calls this the Unattainable Ideal. Lippmanns supports his belief that this “Unattainable Ideal” is unattainable by saying that no individual can grasp the true concepts of the government. The average person doesnt care what is going on in the government and if he does he doesnt have the time to do anything about it because he is so busy with his ordinary life. So basically Lippmann says that the proper role of citizens is to just do the basic rights required of you. No more, no less. He thinks that this is all the public can handle and they can barely handle that at times. He describes the people as being outsiders and that the only ones who can effectively run a government are the people on the inside.
Public Interest is something Lippmann address when someone argues that there should only be one public and that one public should make all the decisions concerning the government. He argues that there cannot be just one public due to the fact that not everyone will be able to agree on issues all the time therefore there must be at least two different publics because certain issues effect people in different ways. One issue will affect some people while others arent and then on other issues they wont be affected while some are. On some issues the public may be there but they may not be heard, and on other issues they are there and they make themselves heard. He relates this to the elections. This is how the public makes themselves heard. If the polititions that they have aligned themselves with do something that makes the public mad or angry when election time comes they will make themselves heard. If the public were to align its self into just one group then the public could virtually do anything it wants. This idea scares Lippmann and this is why he thinks that there should be many different publics and not just one that has all the power. When you have different publics that disagree on issues then you have to make compromises and find a way to solve the problem with out compromising your beliefs just to reach an understanding. Lippmann does not want people to give up what they believe in just to make a compromise. He wants both sides to find a way to make what they both want to happen but with minimal disagreements.
In all situations there are going to be sides that are bias towards certain problems and results. There are always going to be good and bad bias and the way to expose it are to use Lipmanns tests