In The Good Citizen, some of the most eminent contemporary thinkers take up the question of the future of American democracy in an age of globalization, growing civic apathy, corporate unaccountability, and purported fragmentation of the American common identity by identity politics.

There has been a growing chorus of political analysts with doomsday predictions of an American public that is uncivil, disengaged, and alienated. And it′s only getting worse with a younger generation of Americans who do not see the value in voting. The good news is that the bad news is wrong. In this Third Edition of The Good Citizen, Russell Dalton uses current national public opinion surveys, including new evidence from 2018 Pew Center survey data, to show how Americans are changing their views on what good citizenship means. It′s not about recreating the halcyon politics of a generation ago, but recognition that new patterns of citizenship call for new processes and new institutions that reflect the values of the contemporary American public. Trends in participation, tolerance, and policy priorities reflect a younger generation that is more engaged, more tolerant, and more supportive of social justice. The Good Citizen shows how a younger generation is creating new norms of citizenship that are leading to a renaissance of democratic participation. An important comparative chapter in the book showcases cross-national comparisons that further demonstrate the vitality of American democracy.

What does it mean to be a good citizen? What can kids do to become one? In this book, beginning readers will learn how they can help out to make their community a better place!

Good Citizenship in America describes a civic ideal of who enjoys membership in the state and what obligations that entails, and traces its history in America. Until 1865, this ideal called for virtuous political behavior (republicanism) but extended the franchise beyond early republican expectations (democracy). The book follows the widening of the franchise to women and people of color and to those with little or no property following economic development post 1865. In the twentieth century, the civic ideal was influenced by the increase of consumerism, its peak after World War II, and its subsequent decline. More recent citizenship, informed by environmental problems and growing global Darwinism, places a bigger and bigger emphasis on the 'economic conscience'. This is an easily accessible analysis of civic trends in America, and one that highlights much of what is decent in American life.

This is a story of hope, but also of peril. It began when our nation’s polarized political class started conscripting everyday citizens into its culture war. From their commanding heights in political parties, media, academia, and government, these partisans have attacked one another for years, but increasingly they’ve convinced everyday Americans to join the fray. Why should we feel such animosity toward our fellow citizens, our neighbors, even our own kin? Because we’ve fallen for the false narrative, eagerly promoted by pundits on the Left and the Right, that citizens who happen to vote Democrat or Republican are enthusiastic supporters of Team Blue or Team Red. Aside from a minority of party activists and partisans, however, most voters are simply trying to choose the lesser of two evils. The real threat to our union isn’t Red vs. Blue America, it’s the quiet collusion within our nation’s political class to take away that most American of freedoms: our right to self-governance. Even as partisans work overtime to divide Americans against one another, they’ve erected a system under which we ordinary citizens don’t have a voice in the decisions that affect our lives. From foreign wars to how local libraries are run, authority no longer resides with We the People, but amongst unaccountable officials. The political class has stolen our birthright and set us at one another’s throats. This is the story of how that happened and what we can do about it. America stands at a precipice, but there’s still time to reclaim authority over our lives and communities.

"Listening to the story is even more dramatic than reading it. It should be purchased by every public and school library." - School Library Journal

Most Americans believe that the ratification of the Constitution in 1788 marked the settlement of post-Revolutionary disputes over the meanings of rights, democracy, and sovereignty in the new nation. In The Citizenship Revolution, Douglas Bradburn undercuts this view by showing that the Union, not the Nation, was the most important product of independence. In 1774, everyone in British North America was a subject of King George and Parliament. In 1776 a number of newly independent "states," composed of "American citizens" began cobbling together a Union to fight their former fellow countrymen. But who was an American? What did it mean to be a "citizen" and not a "subject"? And why did it matter? Bradburn’s stunning reinterpretation requires us to rethink the traditional chronologies and stories of the American Revolutionary experience. He places battles over the meaning of "citizenship" in law and in politics at the center of the narrative. He shows that the new political community ultimately discovered that it was not really a "Nation," but a "Union of States"—and that it was the states that set the boundaries of belonging and the very character of rights, for citizens and everyone else. To those inclined to believe that the ratification of the Constitution assured the importance of national authority and law in the lives of American people, the emphasis on the significance and power of the states as the arbiter of American rights and the character of nationhood may seem strange. But, as Bradburn argues, state control of the ultimate meaning of American citizenship represented the first stable outcome of the crisis of authority, allegiance, and identity that had exploded in the American Revolution—a political settlement delicately reached in the first years of the nineteenth century. So ended the first great phase of the American citizenship revolution: a continuing struggle to reconcile the promise of revolutionary equality with the pressing and sometimes competing demands of law, order, and the pursuit of happiness.

"What kind of citizen is no ordinary education book. By drawing on accessible and engaging discussions around the goals of schooling, it is imminently readable by a broad public. Neither fluff nor polemic, the theory and practice described in the book are based in solid empirical research and come out of the most influential frameworks for citizenship and democratic education of the last several decades (the "Three Kinds of Citizens" framework that emerged from collaboration between the author and Dr. Joseph Kahne as well as consultations with thousands of school teachers and civic leaders.) - This framework has been used in 67 countries to help teachers and school reformers think about how to structure educational programs and how schools can strengthen democratic societies. - This book pulls together a decade of research on schools into one place giving the reader a comprehensive look at why schools should be at the forefront of public engagement and how we can make that happen"--

Talking to children about terrorism used to be unthinkable. These days however, they have been exposed to the realities of a sometimes hostile world. That doesn't mean that national security has to be a scary subject. In fact, our children are the key to our nation's security and strength because they are the future. How children define good citizenship will have a significant impact on how they will guide America later. When they learn to be accountable for their actions, respect diversity, and show compassion, they are learning to be good American citizens. When children practice the tips from HOW KIDS CAN BE GOOD CITIZENS in everyday situations, they serve as good role models for their community and someday, the world. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mother of five, Ms. Bennett brings a unique perspective to national security by combining the skills she uses at home with those required in her work as a CIA officer. Observing that parenting requires balance, objectivity, and the ability to remain focused on the long-term, Bennett demonstrates the importance of these qualities in securing America in her book NATIONAL SECURITY MOM. Ms Bennett has packed her powerful lessons of citizenship into this children's book to provide parents and teachers a tool for demonstrating civil leadership. As a Senior Counterterrorism Analyst in the CIA, Gina Bennett authored the earliest warnings of today's terrorism trends, including the 1993 report that foreshadowed the danger of Osama bin Laden. Her analysis was deemed "prescient" and "genius" by major media and senior government officials and has gained recent popularity from the Oscar-nominated film "Zero Dark Thirty," Emmy-winning Showtime series "Homeland," and the HBO Documentary "Manhunt" which catapulted Ms. Bennett into the spotlight as a founder of "The CIA Sisterhood."

"Education for Empire examines how American public schools created and placed children on multiple and uneven paths to "good citizenship." These paths offered varying kinds of subordination and degrees of exclusion closely tied to race, national origin, and US imperial ambitions. Public school administrators, teachers, and textbook authors grappled with how to promote and share in the potential benefits of commercial and territorial expansion, and in both territories and states, how to apply colonial forms of governance to the young populations they professed to prepare for varying future citizenships. The book brings together subjects in American history usually treated separately--in particular the formation and expansion of public schools and empire building both at home and abroad. Temporally framed by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion and 1924 National Origins Acts, two pivotal immigration laws deeply entangled in and telling of US quests for empire, case studies in California, Hawaii, Georgia, New York, the Southwest, and Puerto Rico reveal that marginalized people contested, resisted, and blazed alternative paths to citizenship, in effect destabilizing the boundaries that white nationalists, including many public school officials, in the United States and other self-described "white men's countries" worked so hard to create and maintain"--Provided by publisher.