Duty – A Guest Post By Ellie Ferguson

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Duty is one of those loaded words that seems to mean different things to different people.  According to Miriam Webster Dictionary, duty is “something that is done as part of a job; something that you must do because it is morally right or because the law requires it; active military service.” According to the Ayn Rand Lexicon, duty is “One of the most destructive anti-concepts in the history of moral philosophy . . . The meaning of the term “duty” is: the moral necessity to perform certain actions for no reason other than obedience to some higher authority, without regard to any personal goal, motive, desire or interest.”

 

This dichotomy in definitions is one of the hurdles I had to clear when I sat down to write Hunter’s Duty. In the novel, Maggie Thrasher has put her life on hold to fulfill what she sees as her duty to her clan to hunt down and kill a rogue shapechanger. Maggie steps into the role of tracker after the rogue sets others on the clan in an attempt to kill the clan leader and as many others as possible. What Maggie doesn’t realize at the time is that she isn’t being given the training she needs to successfully carry out her mission. This isn’t some subversive attempt by others in the clan to make sure she fails. Far from it.

 

Even when Maggie realizes that her clan leader has failed to give her all the information he has about the rogue, information that could have helped her avoid almost being killed, she continues the hunt. Her sense of duty, for lack of a better word, prevents her from abandoning the search. This isn’t because she’d been ordered on the hunt by the clan leader. It isn’t even because it is something others might see as being “morally right”. After all, if she does fulfill her mission, she will have to kill the rogue without benefit of a trial.

 

No, she does it because it is something she knows has to be done. The rogue doesn’t care if he kills innocents, shapechanger or normal. All he cares about is attaining the power he feels is his due. Maggie has seen the results of his work, both in the carnage of the attack on the clan before Hunter’s Duty opens and earlier, when he first took a member of the clan and changed him into something that was only one step above feral. She’s lived with the nightmares of Joshua Volk for ten years. Now she has a chance to deal with him, assuming he doesn’t manage to kill her first.

 

The duty she feels is something very much akin to responsibility. She has the skills — or at least thinks she does — to hunt Volk down and kill him. If she fails, she knows he will harm others, just as he’d harmed members of her clan. But it is more than that. She knows that if he is allowed to continue his reign of terror, the normals will realize monsters really do exist and that they live next door or down the street. The bloodbath that followed would cost lives, too many lives, on both sides.

 

This isn’t an altruistic sense of duty, however. Maggie wants to live. More than that, she wants to live the life she’s chosen for herself and she knows she won’t be allowed to do so if Volk’s actions bring about the discovery of their kind. So, even though killing Volk would help all shapechangers, it will ultimately help her live as she wants to, at least until another threat comes along.

 

One of the things I liked about Maggie as I prepared to write the book and got to know her was that she didn’t blindly follow orders. It didn’t matter if it was her clan leader or someone else who was in a position of power over her. She weighed the situation, considered the facts and then came to her own decision. Her own personal code of ethics, her morality if you like, guided her along the way. She’s flawed and she knows it, but she doesn’t let it stop her. At least not for long.

 

In that, she’s very different from a lot of real “characters” that live next door or up the block. You know the ones I mean. They’re the ones who tell us we should do something because the President tells us to. We shouldn’t worry about what the law actually says. After all, if Congress couldn’t be bothered to read it, why should we?

 

That answer is really quite simple: because we aren’t just blind followers. We have no duty to comply just because it might be politically expedient for us to do so.

 

Or, to put it another way, we have a duty to question our representatives, whether they sit on our city councils or on Capitol Hill. If there is any duty, especially in the sense of “something that is done as part of a job,” it is our duly elected politicians. However, that is a “duty” all too many of them seem to have forgotten. How often do we find them more concerned with keeping the PACs happy or doing what they feel is most “socially” correct than doing what their constituents actually want? Or how often do we see them throwing the Constitution out the window in order to secure stronger positions in the Senate or House?

 

Don’t believe that’s happened? Look at the events of this past week when the Senate decided to go “nuclear” and change the filibuster rules. Until Thursday, to defeat a filibuster, there had to be a block of 60 senators to 51. The purported reason for this change was because the evil Republicans were holding up too many of the President’s judicial and other nominees. Under the new rules, nominees to the Supreme Court and legislation will still face the 60 votes to block a filibuster. However, this is yet another step down that slippery slope where the protections built into our government by the Founding Fathers are being eroded.

 

Another example is Obamacare. No, I’m not going to go into whether it is a good thing or not. Sarah has written on this topic much more eloquently than I ever could. What I’m talking about here is Obama’s decision to amend the law on his own, telling people they can keep their old insurance for another year. This executive decree, for that is all it can be, flies in the face of the fact that the cancellation notices being sent out before then were, on the whole, because the policies did not meet the requirements of Obamacare. Nor does the decree take into account the individual state insurance boards that have to approve the policies that had, until Obama realized just how badly his approval rating had dropped, decided to use an executive power he really doesn’t have. And then there are the insurance companies themselves. How many of them are really going to trust the government not to come back at them sometime down the road because they broke the law by issuing polices that didn’t meet the statutory requirments?

 

Where is the Congress in all this? If there is such a thing as a duty to your constituents, hasn’t Congress once again sidestepped it? No one there is making the hard decisions and no one is actually listening to what their constituents want. Instead, they are jockeying for sound bite moments with the mainstream media, all in an attempt to look relevant.

 

So, the hard decisions are up to us to make. Do we continue to go along, hoping that Congress finally wakes up before the existence of “monsters” is confirmed? Or do we take matters into our own hands? I, for one, say we step up and take responsibility for making sure the status quo is given a very strong shake. We have a duty to ourselves, if to no one else, to become educated on what our elected officials are doing. We need to understand where the candidates running for office are getting their money. I live in Texas. I want a governor whose ties are here, not to some PACs and money rich contributors in New York or DC.

 

So, the time is here to make a decision. The line, at least metaphorically, has been drawn in the sand. Do we fight to return to a time when the Constitution was respected or do we continue along the path we’re on? A path that allows off-duty policemen to force random drivers to pull off the road where they can “volunteer” for a federal study drinking and driving, one where the feds ask for breath, blood or even cheek swabs and “promise” the results will remain anonymous.

 

Call me skeptical. Call me cynical. But that is an abuse of authority and it is all too representative of what is happening in this country. It is time to return to respecting the Bill of Rights, of checks and balances in our government and of having a duly proposed and approved budget instead of stopgap measures that only increase the national debt while threatening continued cuts to our military and our infrastructure.

 

It is our duty to question, to learn and to demand answers and, if we don’t receive those answers, to vote out those in office who continue to be non-responsive to their constituents.

 

 

68 thoughts on “Duty – A Guest Post By Ellie Ferguson”

    1. It isn’t necessarily that there is nothing we can do, but that some of us can do a lot less than others, depending on where we live. I don’t recall where you live (other than I think up around those lakish states back east), some of us have representatives that are doing a fairly decent job, about the best we can do is tell them we appreciate it and look towards keeping them in office. Frankly this doesn’t feel like you’re doing much. I can scream until I’m blue in the face, but Chucky Schumer and Debbie Waserman-Schultz aren’t going to care a lick, because I can neither affect their vote, nor vote out one of their allies. The best I can do is donate some money to campaigns in other states, and frankly I can’t afford to donate enough to be noticeable.

      This can frankly be pretty depressing, but we need to keep supporting those that are attempting to do their duty, and supporting the citizens in other areas, like Sarah’s to hold their own representatives responsible.

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      1. I’m in Ohio, I have been here less than a year, and don’t even know who my local politicians are… I need to figure it out before voting rolls around again. I feel guilty I missed voting a few weeks ago, but I didn’t have time to research, so I didn’t want to vote blind.

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            1. It’s Heinlein’s plan. Take one of my neighbors — old hippie still says things like “come the revolution” perpetually well intentioned and believing everyone who is “doing good” through the means of government force. I just ask her…

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              1. You can always resort to the expedient of pocking up a copy of the local edition of the Daily Worker (Hunh – just noticed; funny way to spell shirk) and vote against its recommended slate. Where I live we have a daily (Liberal but they think they’re moderate) and two weeklies (more liberal and they know it and sorta conservative) so I can triangulate.

                Come Election Day, if all else has failed, vote straight party line for the more conservative party (a few editions of the local paper should tell you which that is — look for whether they identify party when an officeholder is proven crooked … which puts me to thinking that perhaps most papers don’t identify “bad” pols who merit a D after their name is because they see it as a dog-bites-man type story?)

                The primary is where your vote (and presence) counts most, so that is where you need to put in the time. Find out which of your local stations carries Limbaugh and try listening to the local call-in host — unless he/she is an attempt at “balance” the odds are you will soon enough learn who are your local conservatives. It will also put you in the way of info on local TEA Party and Meet The Candidate events. For that matter, check for a local party web site or party headquarters and wander in … great opportunity to get a feel for whether they are “nice” people dutifully doing their bit to improve the community or committed to keeping government limited; who knows, you might find an organization so non-existent you can take over.

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                1. The League of Whining, er ‘scuze me, Women Voters (which used to be a great organization before they were infiltrated) often has a free flyer about state and federal slates that provides a list of candidates and affiliations, along with state ballot initiatives or constitutional amendments. They had a good one for the Texas constitutional amendments this year, for those who’d lost count. Otherwise I ignore the group, or lean against.

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                  1. You can always call Planned Parenthood’s local office and ask for their endorsements & voter guide. Whether you are Pro-Life, Pro-Choice or a conscientous objector, Planned Parenthood’s slate is a reliable indicator of which candidates think government doesn’t do enough to for us.

                    The Second Amendment is also a pretty good quick indicator — find a local range and spend a day shootin’ & talkin’ and I wager you’ll come away with a very good sense of who your local gun owners disdain.

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                2. You’ve all given me much to contemplate, the only thing I can say is that I won’t be taking over anything, the idea of getting involved in politics gives me the shudders.

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                  1. Which is precisely the point of what the ever-to-be damned “they” want.

                    So long as they can discourage the average citizen from participating in politics, they can remain in power. That was the main reason they went after Palin with such vitriol–She represents the cross to their vampire, which is normal citizen empowerment vs. the power of the anointed.

                    Regardless of Palin’s virtues or lack thereof, what happened to her represents something profoundly disturbing and scary for our body politic. I’m not sure that someone who didn’t go to an Ivy League school could get elected, in today’s environment. And, if had the temerity to try, the powers of the press and establishment would combine to destroy them. Just as they did with Palin.

                    Given what happened with McCain, and the sort of person he is, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if her involvement in his sinking ship wasn’t intentional, and a planned act to discredit her on the national stage, in reprisal for what she did to the establishment Republicans in Alaska. It’s too bad she fell for it, because we’d be a lot better off with her as an unknown Western governor who could be brought to the national stage as an outsider with considerable experience as governor. Unfortunately, they were successful in driving her from office, something the Republican establishment should have circled the wagons to stop.

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                3. I know you didn’t do this on purpose, RES, but…

                  You can always resort to the expedient of pocking up a copy of the local edition of the Daily Worker …

                  Sergeant Portena suggests that the best way to pock up a copy of the Daily Worker is to put .22 inch holes in it from a room’s length away. (Larger holes would tear it up too quickly, so the fun would be over too soon.)

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                  1. Groan. I wish I could claim intentionality!!! Or even credit it to that old fraud Freud. But it is simply a fortuitous happenstance of the fact my keyboard’s keys for I and O have been worn blank over the years.

                    Sometimes it is worth it.

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                    1. By the way, RES, roughly where are you located? I’m going to be in the US for a few weeks around Christmas, and if it turns out I’m anywhere near you and respective holiday schedules permit, I’d enjoy meeting you in person and attempting to create some kind of pun event horizon.

                      If you don’t want to post your location for everyone on the Internet to see, contact me at first name dot last name, courtesy of Gmail.

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                    2. Piedmont, NC is sufficiently imprecise for internet purpose.

                      As for your opinion that

                      “I’d enjoy meeting you in person”

                      all I can say is “Clearly, you’ve never met me in person.” The time lag provided by typing, editing and internet allow me to seem much quicker than I actually am.

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                4. Google is also your friend in this. I found two local (yes, even in Austin!) Tea Parties by searching for “Tea Party in Austin.”

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            2. Most important is asking questions and listening carefully to the answers, alert to Clinton Clauses and the meaning of “is”.

              Today’s post suggests two questions any candidate ought be challenged to answer:

              What is the duty of the State to its Citizens?

              What is the duty of Citizens to the State?

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              1. Thank you. You asked the two questions I skirted around when I wrote the post last night because I kept circling back to JFK’s inauguration speech. In it, he said, “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” In the years since that quote, people seem to have flipped around the questions. Instead of asking what we can do for our country, too many are asking what this country can do for them. It goes back to the sense of entitlement so many hold now, a belief that the country has a duty to hold their hands and take care of them without them having to take responsibility for their own lives.

                For me, the question is still what can I do for my country and the answer, right now, is simple: I can do all I possibly can to honor the rights and privileges established in the Constitution, the Declaration and, most especially, the Bill of Rights.

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                1. Several years ago I saw a poster in the local public library where I lived in upstate New York. It said “Ask not what your country can do for you…well, ok, go ahead and ask.” I can’t remember if it was a state or a federal poster, but it made me cringe.

                  As for myself, I’m not even sure if I should be worried about what I can do for my country, unless I had the ability and disposition to join the armed forces. I think we all could do better if we could stop worrying about the country altogether, and ask ourselves instead “What can we do for our neighbors?” The answers–both charitable and profitable–would likely do far more for our country, than paying taxes, or even serving in the military–and certainly more than the “sacrifices” that the politicians typically call on us to do, for the “good” of all.

                  (Actually, I’d add that we shouldn’t dismiss all thought of what we should do for our country. Obviously, military service is sometimes called for. And I would also add that each and every one of us should be trained in the use of a pistol and a rifle–so that we could defend home and country, if called upon to do so. But overall, it’s our economic system–one built on service to others–that makes us great!)

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        2. Local pols here are a pain also, most of them don’t campaign and over half of them don’t even have a website or any info on their views available on the web. It is pure name recognition, and I’m anti-social so I don’t recognize a lot of the names, or at best recognize them as ‘that guy who owns the Yamaha shop’ with no knowledge of their political views.

          I ask around to other people, but that is also fraught with frustration, half of them either say, I don’t know, or “I’m voting Frank, I went to high school with him and he had really cool ’57 Chevy” which frankly doesn’t tell me a dad-blasted thing about how he wants to run the county.

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      2. You are absolutely right.. But there is one more thing we can do and that’s keep our eyes and ears open for that one unknown candidate who actually does understand what’s important and is willing to buck the system and do all we can to help get him elected.

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    2. Despite what Ayn Rand said above, she also said that a doctor faced with an epidemic would do what he could to treat people within his range and coordinate with other doctors to make it as effective as possible, rather than look at the whole scale of the epidemic and think of how to stop it all.

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    4. “Take Back Your Government “by Robert A. Heinlein
      Available at Amazon. Basic stuff and a lot of hard work. Probably requires a longer attention span than most voters have.

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  2. Congress only feels ‘duty’ to their jobs, elections, and their post-politics jobs with people they favored. Not their actual constituents.

    On the other hand, a remark i have heard from certain sectors about characters in military SF is that their sense of duty is ‘unrealistic’- always said by someone who has never had a sense of duty. (usually, no sense of loyalty either)

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    1. Those are the same people that think those at the Alamo were idiots for staying. They say a rational army would run away, then congratulate themselves on being rational.

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    3. Aristotle observed a long time ago that we like characters who are as good as we are, or a little better. And while by “good” he meant more than morally (“The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.” – G.K. Chesterton ), it did include the moral.

      Human Wave books go right over some people’s zone of tolerance

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  3. Has anyone else ever noticed how much duty appears in fairy tales? Not the “we can pass a law and fix it” fairy tales, but the old-style, colored fairy book tales. Beast has a duty as a host, but Beauty’s father has a duty as a guest as well. How about the stories of immature princesses who have to suffer until they will take up their proper role and duties to their lands? Now we have “leaders” who believe they can wave magic wands and have machines that turn paper into fool’s gold. They see their duty as being only to themselves, not where it should be. And there’s no magic mirror to say “you’re not the brightest/fairest/kindest of them all, sweetie. Far from it. Now close my curtain before you make my glass crack!”

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  4. I would distinguish between voluntarily chosen and involuntarily ascribed duty. The former is valid; the latter is not. With the proviso, of course, that one may “choose” duty by accepting help beforehand: it is indecent to rely on someone else’s help but then stint one’s own help to them when it is called upon.

    Ayn Rand, whose whole family and circle of friends was shattered — and many murdered — by the Russian Revolution, whose victors came to power claiming the right to kill anyone they felt like in the name of involuntarily-ascribed duty — was more than a little bit prejudiced on this particular matter.

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    1. On the other hand, Ayn Rand clearly thought it was the duty of all movie makers either to refrain from hiring Communists to write scripts or to monitor them closely to ensure that they did not use the movies to promote Communism — and that they had no choice in the matter.

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        1. It does, however, raise the question of whether she is right or wrong, because if she is right, one can not demand that all one’s duties be voluntarily chosen, but faces the possibility of their being ascribed.

          Which is what Jordan was arguing for

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  5. Since the social contract we agreed to was the Constitution of the United States of America, we have absolutely no duty to obey Obama’s whims over the law of the land. In fact, it could be argued that we have a duty to resist the imposition of said whims.

    The insurance companies have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders. It might be wise for many of them to scale back their actual issuing of insurance and instead find other investments while riding out this storm of uncertainity between possibly-unconstitutional laws and almost-certainly-unconstitutional executive orders, with little idea which way the courts will decide. This is going to suck from the POV of seeking medical insurance, but then the insurance companies only have a duty to those customers to whom they have actually sold policies: not to merely-potential customers.

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    1. Not to be pointing fingers but the Insurance Industrial Complex and Big Pharma were avid supporters of Obama’s (well, Pelosi’s & Reid’s) plan. They just didn’t count on Barry throwing them under the bus so quickly.

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  6. I deeply hate to say this, but if things get much worse, the military may wind up having to choose between their duty to obey the President and their duty to obey the Constitution. Obama is pushing things to the brink of coup-from-above, and hence inviting countercoup-from-below.

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      1. I was recently reminded (reading Stephen Hunter’s Hot Springs) that there are several stories about returning veterans “cleaning up” their communities upon their return, I expect RAH had read them. For that matter, such stories are throughout History — what is Robin Hood if not “the veterans returned?” Of course, that also applies to the origins of the KKK, so it is a sword cutting both ways.

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        2. For an account of such a true event google the battle of Athens Tn aka the McMinn county war. 1946 a bunch of returned WWII vets wound up cleaning house after an election plagued by rampant vote fraud and intimidation.
          Well known in 2A circles as a classic example of why citizens NEED access to weapons of war.

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          2. That was the event I had in mind, although a glance at Hunter’s afterword informs me that it happened in Hot Springs, Arkansas as well. Like as not it happened in aplenty of places, although in most it wasn’t so convulsive. I would be surprised if RAH was unaware of such happenings.

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    2. the military may wind up having to choose between their duty to obey the President and their duty to obey the Constitution.

      Why else do you think your government is purging Christians, conservatives, and constitutionalists from the military, especially from the officer ranks, and instituting Stalinist-style political officers? They need to make sure that the army cannot be turned against them, even if they have to destroy the effectiveness of the army to do so.

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      1. The methods, however, they are choosing to execute this purge are so clumsy and obvious that they are almost certainly only getting the less cunning Christians, conservatives and constitutionalists. Meaning that Obama is giving himself the illusion of safety while leaving the most potentially-dangerous countercoup plotters in place.

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    3. I think you’ve identified a very significant and dangerous process. The militarization of civilian police and the gelding of honest military leadership is truly frightening. The fun part of this equation is that the guns in civilian hands form the biggest armed force on the planet (one of the reasons the 2nd amendment is constantly under attack). I think that most of current military and veterans will stand by their oaths, and I hope law enforcement will remember theirs.

      http://oathkeepers.org/oath/

      III %ers http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/

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  7. The reason our politics have gotten as bad as they are is because our electorate sucks. Like, hull-breach-in-deep-space sucks. The reason PACs and campaign contributors have so much power is because a majority of the people who vote allow themselves to be swayed by ads and phone calls.

    It’s partly the politicians’ fault. They’ve spent the last few decades telling people to eat all the cake they want and don’t worry about running out. As a result the electorate has abdicated their duty to actually understand the issues and vote accordingly, instead of pulling the lever for the guy promising more goodies.

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  8. I’m going to volunteer in Greg Abbott’s campaign as my party in helping TX remain red. Greg Abbott is Gov. Perry’s Lt. Gov. Gov. Perry is not seeking re-election. This also helps Ted Cruz. I’m not sure if he’s a Rep or a Sen.

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  10. Duty is a damn good topic. We’re getting into III% and Oathkeeper territory these days. Duties to the Declaration of Independence , along with family and friends, are those that matter right now. We haven’t yet left the country, but the country has left us.
    The Constitution is rather malleable and currently being twisted to the breaking point. The Bill of Rights has to be non-negotiable. Current recommended reading might include “Absolved” by Mike Vanderboegh along with regular doses of Heinlein and Ayn Rand.
    http://waronguns.blogspot.com/2008/07/absolved-banner-connector.html

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  11. Duty is one of the interesting words. For those who have read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance…Duty is much like Quality…we all know what it is when we see it/act on it – but to define it…duty is slippery. Parents have a duty (actually, several) to their children. Spouses have a duty to each other. The religious have a duty to their faith. The soldier has a duty – to his command, to his country and to his fellow citizens. The citizen has a duty to his/her fellow citizens; a duty to his municipality/state/federal government. At what point do those/will those duties conflict. And, when the duties you have accepted do conflict, which one takes precedence? From this Canadian’s point of view – there’s a duty not being observed – that of civil disobedience by good people. And by failing in that civil disobedience, the evil people will not only win, but eventually, destroy the life you good folk have been trying to preserve, Burke’s misquoted comment – Evil flourishes when good men do nothing is really this: When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” And that, friends, is a duty for all.

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    1. Civil Disobedience is merely a civilian instance of the soldier’s duty to not follow an unlawful order. Or maybe it’s t’other way ’round? Two sides, one coin.

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  12. If you think about it, our rights often have corresponding duties as well. Our First Amendment, in particular implies a duty to speak up against corruption, and our Second, to be prepared to literally fight against corruption if it tries to exercise control against us. It isn’t clear that all our rights have duties associated with them (I would be hard-pressed to explain a “duty” that corresponds to the right not to be subject to searches and seizures, for example), and some rights have several duties. But in any case, we have these duties, and in a free society, they cannot be forced upon us. We have to accept them of our free will and choice.

    And I would part ways, somewhat, from Ayn Rand, and even RAH and L. Neil Smith (to a lesser extent), who were (almost) completely anti-duty: we have duties to friends, families and even complete strangers, although those duties can be weakened by their errant actions. But, again, these duties are there by free will, and, if forced on us, would lose their meaning.

    One thing I have noticed, is the tendency of the State to convince us that something is a right, which is properly a duty. Education, for example, or health care. In the process, they completely destroy it, and they use this “right” to destroy our freedoms.

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