This is a Patriot’s Journey post. Remember to check out the other Patriotic Journeyers: Drumwaster, The Bastage and the folks at The Line Is Here…
Throughout history, patriotism and the fulfillment of duty have been considered among the highest virtues. Perhaps the highest virtues.
In the Iliad, Achilles was angry at Agamemnon and thought that the war wasn’t worth his effort. However, in the end, he completed his duty, rising to the call and going into battle for Greece.
The central theme of the Aeneid was Aeneas’s sacrifice for duty. He abandoned all of his personal desires to fulfill his duty to his country, to establish a new empire.
The civilizations to which we owe our modern thought, to which we owe our own civilization, all praised patriotism and fulfillment of duty. Yet today, some say that dissent is patriotic, that duty should not be required, that when duty interferes with personal interests or beliefs, it should be ignored.
I’ll agree that dissent is required in some cases, but too often it walks a fine line with treason. I’m instead aligned with the seers of old, with Homer and Virgil, with the civilizations that generated our modern society. I’m a patriot and try to be a responsible citizen.
So I was disappointed when a few of my fellow citizens grumbled and complained as we assembled Tuesday morning for jury duty in one of the two upstairs courtrooms in the historic old Placerville courthouse. Some completed “hardship” forms requesting they be excused for reasons little more than trivial inconveniences. Some, I’d wager, didn’t even show up.
Veal calves! Whiny slackers, unwilling to disrupt their daily routines for civic service. Not very patriotic and certainly not civic minded. Homer and Virgil would be ashamed of them. I know I was.
But most were ready to do their duty. Good citizens. Patriots. I didn’t want the slackers on my jury anyway.
Our criminal justice system, for all its flaws, is based on an amazing concept: that no one man or government agency can adequately and fairly judge a person charged with a crime. Instead, our founders conceived the notion that only our fellow citizens could be so entrusted.
Journalist and author Stephen J. Adler wrote, “The American system of trial by jury is unique. No other nation relies so heavily on ordinary citizens to make its most important decisions about law, business practice, and personal liberty — even death. Ideally, Americans take their participation seriously lest they someday stand before their peers seeking justice.”
We live in an amazing country reliant on a brilliantly conceived system of self government. If ever I find myself on trial, I hope it’s in an American court of law where I’ll be thanking my lucky stars that my future will be determined, not by bureaucrats, but by a citizen jury of my peers. I just pray they’ll be the patriots that take the job seriously and not the whiny slackers who tried, unsuccessfully, to get out of it.