Of all the ideas that became the United States, there's a line here that's at the heart of all the others.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations,

pursuing invariably the same object,

evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism.

It is their right, it is their their duty to throw off such government and provide

new guards for their future security people don't talk that way anymore beautiful

huh no idea what you said.

From Powerline blog.com and produced by ricochet.com.

This is the Powerline show with your host, Steve Hayward.

Normally, I am not much of a Nicholas Cage fan, and I've mostly outgrown action-adventure movies.

But I do very much like the short scene, excerpted in the cold open just now, from National Treasure, set in the National Archives,

where Cage gazes reverently at the Declaration of Independence, and recites the r revolution passage from the middle of the famous second paragraph, after which he says, people don't talk

that way anymore. And the cherry on top is his clueless sidekick saying, beautiful,

no idea what you said. Therein lies the story of this year's semi-quincentennial of the Declaration.

There's no need now to review the sorry state of civic education in America

that yields such eminently plausible movie dialogue like Nick Cage saying,

people don't talk that way anymore, and his sidekick saying,

No Idea What You Said.

One fervently hopes that this season of reflection on the declaration will assist the revival of civic literacy in America,

and if the flood of terrific books issuing forth or any indication, we just might have a fighting

chance. Today's entry in the many books I'm featuring in this series is Michael Oslin's

National Treasure, How the Declaration of Independence Made America. Misha, as his friends know him,

...