If the government has the prime duty to Serve and Protect its citizens, in return, what is also our responsibility to the state?
Answers
(1) You need to look at the full, overarching sweep of the polity, to appreciate both sides of the ledger.
(2a)
Social contract in the broader sense, is not to be confused with Democracy. You can have a social contract in a high-performing democracy, or a . In a functional social contract abstraction, the citizenry is cool with the ’s system of bones and muscles. E.g. in a Benevolent Dictatorship, the citizenry at large may be happy to trade-off a lower level of civil liberties with sustained, aggressive economic development.
(2b) Coercion
It’s not necessarily all serve and protect, play nice, although that’s the state’s ultimate objective.
The state has coercive power over its citizenry. Law enforcement. Decide on the fate of the fetus in your body. Incarcerate badasses. Jury duty. Military conscription.
(2c) Service
The state serves its citizens. Depending on the particular stew-of-the-day swirl of political, economic and social ideologies, such services maybe direct (e.g. government provides postal services), or indirect (provide an enabling ecosystem for citizens, including their businesses, ala invisible hands) to thrive (or sink).
(2d) Protection
The state protects its citizens, self-evidently, from external threats, and less intuitively, from themselves. Humanity has dark self-destructive instincts, Hobbesian “nasty, brutish and short”, alongside glowing, soaring altruism, in its colorful continuum of impulses.
(3) We come back to the question: “In return, what is our reponsibility to the state?”
Social contract
Sustain the social contract with respect to the citizen’s end of the compact.
Respect the valid outcomes arising from the social contract ministrations and gyrations, even if we disagree vehemently. E.g. election results, referendum results, the oftentimes inexplicable will of the majority.
The social contract is living and breathing. Revise it as and when appropriate, notwithstanding its abstract nuances.
, more precisely Civic Duty, e.g.
obey the law,
pay tax,
vote,
jury duty,
donate blood.
e.g. military conscription. Obligations are generally granted in return for an increase in an individual's rights or power. A President’s obligation is greater than a lay-citizen’s obligations.