Word: civics
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...proved by flying a kite that lightning was electricity, and he invented a rod to tame it. He devised bifocal glasses and clean-burning stoves, charts of the Gulf Stream and theories about the contagious nature of the common cold. He was a pioneer of do-it-yourself civic improvement, launching such schemes as a lending library, volunteer fire corps, insurance association and matching-grant fund raiser. He helped invent America's unique style of homespun humor and philosophical pragmatism. In foreign policy, he created an approach that wove together idealism with balance-of-power realism. In politics, he proposed...
...that later critics would feel toward his own shopkeeping values, he had faith in the wisdom of the common man and felt that a new nation would draw its strength from what he called "the middling people." Through his self-improvement tips for cultivating personal virtues and through his civic-improvement schemes for furthering the common good, he helped to create, and to celebrate, a new ruling class of ordinary citizens who learned to be tolerant of the varied beliefs and dogmas of their neighbors...
...great spiritual passions. Others see the same reflection and admire the basic middle-class values and democratic sentiments that now seem under assault from elitists, radicals, religious fanatics and other bashers of modernity and the bourgeoisie. His admirers look upon Franklin as an exemplar of the personal character and civic virtue that are too often missing in today's world...
...military mission in parts of Iraq looks set to increasingly combine reconstruction with counterinsurgency, which according to the DOD's dictionary describes "those military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency." And textbook counterinsurgency prioritizes the political and administrative aspects over combat - the insurgency depends on the support or, at least, consent of the local population; the authorities work to isolate and destroy the insurgents by winning the loyalty of the local population through providing good governance and protection from intimidation. The U.S. hopes to get help from allies, hoping to recruit...
Canada's federal government decided last week not to contest the rulings of three provincial courts that had all come to the conclusion that denying homosexuals the right to marry violated Canada's constitutional commitment to civic equality. What that means is that gay marriage has now arrived in the western hemisphere. And this isn't some euphemism. It isn't the quasi-marriage now celebrated in Vermont, whose "civil unions" approximate marriage but don't go by that name. It's just marriage--for all. Canada now follows the Netherlands and Belgium with full-fledged marital rights for gays...