Hand It to Them

LOOKING idly at my bookcase the other day, I fixed on a volume I had never noticed before: The American Citizens Handbook. It had come to me, I realized, from an old friend who was moving and unloading some books. It had sat on my shelf, ignored, for years. As I fingered this book, it seemed a relic from a distant, and glowing, past. What’s more, it was the product of—could this be true?—the National Education Association. Coming to know this book made me practically weep for a liberalism that has been lost, and an Americanism, too.

I did some poking around, and soon learned that I was not the first “conservative” (as descendants of Jefferson are now forced to call themselves) to take an interest in the Handbook. Michael Farris, the home-schooling leader in Virginia, discovered it in the mid 1980s. Then the education secretary, William Bennett, used it in a speech. He challenged the NEA to reissue the book, or, if it would not, to permit others to do so. The association responded flummoxed and embarrassed. One spokesman explained, “The world has changed a lot” (ah, and so has the NEA). Another sniffed, “We’ve got lots of other books if [Bennett] wants to pay for them.”

About the Author

Jay Nordlinger

Jay Nordlinger was a senior editor of National Review and a book fellow at National Review Institute.

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LOOKING idly at my bookcase the other day, I fixed on a volume I had never noticed before: The American Citizens Handbook. It had come to me, I realized, from an old friend who was moving and unloading some books. It had sat on my shelf, ignored, for years. As I fingered this book, it seemed a relic from a distant, and glowing, past. What’s more, it was the product of—could this be true?—the National Education Association. Coming to know this book made me practically weep for a liberalism that has been lost, and an Americanism, too.

I did some poking around, and soon learned that I was not the first “conservative” (as descendants of Jefferson are now forced to call themselves) to take an interest in the Handbook. Michael Farris, the home-schooling leader in Virginia, discovered it in the mid 1980s. Then the education secretary, William Bennett, used it in a speech. He challenged the NEA to reissue the book, or, if it would not, to permit others to do so. The association responded flummoxed and embarrassed. One spokesman explained, “The world has changed a lot” (ah, and so has the NEA). Another sniffed, “We’ve got lots of other books if [Bennett] wants to pay for them.”