PORTERVILLE POST | The Right News at the Right Time

| The Road to Rediscovering America’s Identity ~ XXII
BORN RIGHT^© - Aug 22, 2025
with Josh Allen Flowers : josh@portervillepost.com

The Death of the Citizen
~ How the State Replaced the Individual ~

America wasn’t built by subjects.
It wasn’t built by followers, dependents, or “stakeholders.”
It was built by citizens—rugged individuals who understood that rights came from God, not government, and that liberty required responsibility.
Fast forward to today... and what do we see? A culture where:

❄ People demand rights with no duties.
❄ Government plays parent to grown adults.
❄ And “citizenship” has been replaced by “entitlement.”

Make no mistake: this didn’t happen overnight. It’s the result of a century-long campaign to dismantle the idea of self-governing individuals and replace it with a docile, compliant, collectivist class of “managed people.” And it all started with a bait-and-switch.

From “Citizen” to “Consumer”
To “Client of the State”

✰ A citizen is someone who governs.
✰ A consumer is someone who buys.
✰ You can’t control a nation full of armed, opinionated, self-sufficient citizens.
❄ A client of the state is someone who waits for handouts & obeys the rules.
❄ Guess which one the modern regime prefers?
❄ But if you can convince them to trade independence for comfort—you’ve got them. This is the scam that began accelerating in the early 20th century, right around the same time Marxist ideas started leaking into our institutions under fancy new names: “progressivism,” “democratic socialism,” “equity.”
Spoiler: same poison, different bottle.

The 3-Step Formula for Killing Citizenship

Step 1: Weaken the Institutions of Self-Governance. Start with the family. Mock it. Redefine it. Incentivize its breakdown. Replace fathers with checks. Then gut churches, local communities, and voluntary associations—anything that teaches accountability, virtue, or responsibility.
Step 2: Create Dependency. Sell the lie that government is the solution to all problems. Offer “free” education, “free” healthcare, “free” housing. Flood the system with bureaucrats who replace real help with paperwork. Eventually, people forget how to fix anything themselves—and they start begging Leviathan for help.
Step 3: Replace Identity with Role-Playing. Make people believe they are nothing but economic widgets or grievance checkboxes. Strip away duty, heritage, honor, and personal agency.Convince them their value comes from how they vote, consume, or comply—not from who they are as moral beings created in the image of God. Voila. The citizen is dead. Long live the managed human.

What Made The American Citizen Different?

Back when this country was on track, the American citizen saw himself as:

✰ A steward of freedom.
✰ A participant in local governance.
✰ A protector of his family and property.
✰ A builder of community.
✰ A check on government power—not a servant of it.

Contrast that with today’s “citizen,” who’s taught that his job is to:

❄ Complain on social media.
❄ Show up to vote once every two or four years.
❄ Trust the experts.
❄ Obey the signs.
❄ Fill out the forms.
❄ And stay out of it—because “democracy is fragile.”

The transformation is not subtle. It’s a complete rewiring of the American soul.

Why Did They Want The Citizen Dead?

Because citizens don’t make good subjects.

✰ They ask too many questions.
✰ They get involved.
✰ They watch the budget.
✰ They say things like “that’s unconstitutional” or “I read the bill.”
You know what power-hungry regimes hate more than anything? An informed, active, morally grounded citizen who believes he’s the boss. So they had to swap us out.

And they did it slowly—through schools, media, culture, and policy:

❄ Replacing civics with activism.
❄ Replacing virtue with victimhood.
❄ Replacing accountability with appeasement.
❄ Replacing rugged independence with safe, soft conformity.

We went from Live Free or Die to Do What You’re Told in under a century.

The Bureaucratization of Life

Ever notice how there’s now a government department or program for everything?

❄ Want to start a garden? Check your water use permit.
❄ Want to fix a fence? Better check zoning laws.
❄ Want to raise your kids a certain way? The state might disagree.
❄ Want to start a business? Be prepared for 87 forms, 4 inspections, and a poster about COVID safety even though the pandemic ended years ago.

This is how they make freedom feel like a hassle. And guess what happens when freedom becomes exhausting? People give it up. Quietly. Gradually. With a shrug. That’s how the death of the citizen happens—not with a bang, but with bureaucratic boredom.

Newtonian Logic: Reprogramming the Matrix of Identity

Let’s think Newtonian for a second—cause and effect.

❄ If you take away the institutions that train people to govern themselves... → You get a public that waits to be told what to do.
❄ If you reward obedience instead of initiative... → You get a population that complies, even when it knows better.
❄ If you discourage ownership and personal responsibility... → You get a nation that looks to government for rescue—and gets slavery instead.

And here’s the kicker: that was the goal all along. The Marxist worldview doesn’t want empowered individuals. It wants classes, identities, and masses that can be mobilized and managed. In that world, the citizen must die... so the subject can be born.

How Do We Reclaim Citizenship?

It’s not about waving flags harder or voting louder.
It’s about rebuilding the foundations that make true citizenship possible.
✰ Family First: The nuclear family is the original self-governing body. Defend it. Strengthen it. Honor it.
✰ Localism is Sovereignty: Get off the federal hamster wheel. Your city council, county board, and school district matter more than the latest Twitter storm in D.C.
✰ Teach Real Civics: Not “how to protest.” Not “how to advocate.” Teach how government works, how rights function, and what duties come with them.
✰ Practice Ownership: Own your property. Own your income. Own your choices. Teach your kids to build, fix, and think for themselves.
✰ Say No More Often: Every time you refuse to comply with nonsense—useless rules, fake crises, hollow slogans—you resurrect the citizen within.

Success in the Matrix? Not Possible. So We’re Rewriting It.

Let me say it plainly: If you’re inside the current system, success is not one of the possible outcomes. You’ll be managed, manipulated, and taxed into despair.
The only way forward is to reprogram the matrix—at the local level, in the real world—where we teach people again what it means to be citizens, not spectators.
Will we succeed? Maybe. Maybe not.
But as long as we fight, we keep the spark alive.
And one day, that spark becomes a flame that lights the path back home.
The citizen isn’t dead. He’s just been sleeping.
And if you’re reading this... maybe it’s time to wake him up.

What you are not changing, you are choosing.

BORN RIGHT^© ... With Josh Allen Flowers