Hot Abercrombie Chick! characterizes the worst type of ignorant American. "As if citizenship was some actual, tangible thing rather than an on-paper status that a certain group of people decide to classify others by." Is there no such thing as social conditioning? How about money and a passport? Have you tried to travel without them? Go to another country for a year, and perhaps you'll get an idea of how American you are. Your citizenship reeks from the title of your blog, facetious or not. Not many people in the Congo are shopping at their local Abercrombie, nor ranting about how it is shamelessly commercial. Another privileged white "chick", who claims there is no such real thing as citizenship: try telling that to the mexican workers slaving away so that you can eat your fast food, and watch TV while they clean your parents yard, wash your car…exchange your citizenship with them for a day, and notice the difference. Perhaps you've been reading too much Baudrillard, and are in a hyper-reality crisis. "But how is it that a person can simply be "born into" a responsibility without their having made a choice to freely accept that responsibility or actually do something to come into it?" Switch from a philosophy major to history, you need it. Your freedom rhetoric and western notions of selfhood, again, portray your citizenship. Your argument suggests that people only enter choices freely and are otherwise not responsible for their actions or their blogs. "So when children starve in third-world countries, unless a person has somehow caused the food shortage, it is ridiculous to say that he or she is responsible for their deaths." Again, switch your major dudette. You should receive a deficient empathy prize for your careless rationalizations and ignorance of globalization's interconnected effects. I would recommend reading Stiglitz for a start, though it seems like you're too busy espousing your ignorant, American views, rather than waiting another ten years before expecting anyone to read your unbelievably shallow blog. You've mistaken your ability to ramble on for intelligent debate. You're still watching the shadows on the wall, and you're a "philosophy major"? The funniest part is that your blog perfectly represents what people around the world assume about Americans: to largely ignore class and citizenship issues. However, this is common amongst the privileged who care not to acknowledge what is done in their name, and rationalize away why they shouldn't care or feel partially responsible. The biggest joke is that you are writing this blog now, during the Iraq war. And you talk of not 'feeling' your citizenship. Tell that to the Iraqi families who've lost their loved ones. I'm sure they'll understand you saying you had nothing to do with it, you, Hot Ambercrombie Chick.