The primary responsibility of citizens is to obey their nation’s civil and criminal laws.
Is obeying their nation’s civil and criminal laws the primary responsibility of citizens? In my view, the compliance with laws is only a small part for citizens to fulfill their responsibilities and not necessarily the primary one. This assertion of citizens’ main responsibility overlooks some other important elements of human’s responsibilities.
In the first place, compliance with laws is not always in the society’s best interest. Humans are different from other animals in that they belong to an intellectual society. As members in a well organized society, citizens should take their respective social responsibilities that include but are not limited to compliance with laws. Citizens should engage in studies, innovations and other activities rather than just obey their nation’s laws to make the society function well and progress. If compliance with laws is the primary responsibility, the world would not be the world we see today. For example, Galileo supported the theory that the Sun is the center of the universe by conducting enormous experiments, violating religious laws at his time. Galileo violated the laws but promoted human’s great adventure of exploring the universe. Thus, compliance to laws can not be the primary responsibilities of citizens.
In the second place, obeying nation’s laws may contradict the nature of human as animals. Like other creatures, human also need to reproduce themselves to survive. But laws of a certain country in a certain history period might prevent some people from reproducing themselves. For example, during the Second World War, Hitler enacted laws to slaughter Jews in a systematic way to eliminate them from the Earth. Therefore, compliance with this kind of laws could not be viewed as the responsibilities let alone the primary responsibility for Jews at that time.
Nevertheless, that is not to say obeying laws will never be the primary responsibilities of citizens. This claim is appropriate only in very extreme situations, such as during war times. For example, when a country declares war against another country, it may try to utilize all the available resources for the purpose of winning the war. Thus, it is typical for countries in war to enact laws regulating what their citizens should do and should not do. In that case, compliance with these laws might be the primary responsibility of citizens for the country to survive.
In conclusion, whether compliance with laws is citizens’ primary responsibility depends on the different situations of specific cases. The examples cited above and the discussion clearly indicate that, contrary to the original assertion, obeying laws is not the primary responsibility of citizens in most-if not all-cases.
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