Krystal Ball

And to say that we... Right, and a callback to that, to say that we have...

duties and responsibilities to the state.

There are things that we are obliged to do for the state, and there are things the state then is obliged to do for us because we are citizens, and it's a two-way street.

I don't know, how do you think about it?

I guess I would put it a little differently.

I think, for one thing, to Emily's point, the citizen concept goes back to Rome and the Roman Republic, and it was certainly very central to the American founding.

I guess it's mainly a contemporary issue.

Well, sure.

I mean, the French Revolution is a strange place to go as the start.

You're right.

They called each other citizens.

But I think also, you know, this captures a way in which the French Revolution was obviously less successful, I think most people would say.

And how you're describing it as kind of just a fundamental claim of equality of things that the people owe to the state, right?

I think misses what's most important about citizenship, which is that it's a reciprocal obligation among the people.

And that goes back, again, to this notion of what is a republic, right?

One of the things that's so unique about the United States is that it's really, you know, the nation that was brought into being by the sheer will of citizens who wanted to create democracy.

this thing to serve them.

And I think, you know, if you go back and you look historically, really up to very, very close in the 20th century, certainly, you know, in the US, there was very much an understanding of citizenship.

You know, again, it has its legal meaning, who can live where, but citizenship really meant something

much broader.