Responsibility, duty

We celebrate our Declaration of Independence with parades, family outings and cookouts. I enjoy our little community’s annual parade and then a family gathering at home. Small U.S. flags are abundant in our neighborhood — most likely placed by a local realty agent — and fireworks light up the evening sky.

This is all fine and dandy, but we must guard against apathy clouding the day’s deeper meaning.

Celebrate our form of government and the freedom it provides, but remember that being a citizen of this great nation is not an unencumbered free pass. Responsibilities accompany the rights of citizenship. Duties come with the privilege. It is our responsibility to be informed on local and national issues. It is our duty to cast our votes based on reason rather than rhetoric or party. It is our responsibility to respect the opinions of others. It is our responsibility to support our country’s interests. It is our duty, if called, to don our military’s uniform. It is our responsibility to impress the rights and duties of citizenship on successive generations. It is our duty to live by the rule of law.

If we fulfill these responsibilities and duties, this “shining city on a hill” endures. If we don’t ...? David Robinson Mount Dora, Orlando Sentinel Editorial Advisory Board member