91�����

�Come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence,� Abraham Lincoln passionately implored the citizens of Illinois in 1858. More than 160 years later, Dr. Richard D. Ferrier, a tutor at 91����� Aquinas College, California, no less passionately echoes Lincoln�s plea. In his upcoming book, , Dr. Ferrier makes the case for how and why Americans must shape their civic sentiments according to the country�s founding document.

In one form or another, The Declaration of America has existed for almost 25 years, first taking shape through Dr. Ferrier�s friendship with Alan Keyes, a former Reagan Administration official who mounted several bids for the presidency in the 1990s. �Alan believed that the spirit of the country is the Declaration,� says Dr. Ferrier. In his many speeches, Mr. Keyes intimated a vision for American statesmanship animated by that spirit. He eventually asked Dr. Ferrier, a member of his campaign staff, to write a book �that would lay out more systematically what he had been saying in his speeches.�

With co-author and fellow tutor Dr. Andrew Seeley (�87), Dr. Ferrier completed the first edition of that book in time to distribute copies at campaign rallies in 2000. �It was practically what they would call in the Soviet Union a samizdat publication,� he laughs,� mimeographed in a basement and circulated.� Despite its cosmetic humility and the campaign�s ultimate failure, the book proved a source of enduring fascination for many.

To satisfy that fascination, Dr. Ferrier and Dr. Seeley revised the campaign booklet into a civics textbook for highschoolers, entitled , which Dr. Ferrier himself taught in his free time for the homeschool community in Santa Paula, California. But recently, prompted by a growing skepticism about America�s founding values, he undertook yet another, more substantial revision � once more aiming at the general citizen.

�It�s an attempt at patriotic persuasion and self-knowledge for the American citizen, and it ends with a question: Are we worthy of the Declaration in our times?� says Dr. Ferrier. �In that way it�s like a sermon on the lives of the saints followed by, �Are you up to it?�� Like any great preacher, Dr. Ferrier has two audiences in mind. �I want to preach to the choir and convert the heathen,� he laughs.

First are those who are sympathetic to Dr. Ferrier�s admiration for the American republic, but who lack the knowledge and expertise to defend its credibility. �The Republican party published the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1859 because they wanted people to get Lincoln�s arguments about how the nation should stand with respect to slavery,� he explains. �I would like to be a minor-league Lincoln to my fellow citizens of today.�

At the same time, however, Dr. Ferrier hopes the book will fall into less sympathetic hands. �A coalition of people holds hostile views of America�s founding,� he says � although this �coalition� is not a unitary movement. �Some call themselves integralists, and some postliberal; there are elements of romantic agrarianism, with an overheated hostility to technology.� Regardless of their designations, Dr. Ferrier contends that such people �don�t know what they are criticizing when they criticize the American founding.� In particular, he adds, �they underestimate the religious dimension and attention to the common good in the American tradition. They could benefit from the things I bring up in the book.�

The book, which will be released December 30 but is available for pre-order through St. Augustine�s Press, is �a work of public rhetoric,� concludes Dr. Ferrier, appealing both to the head and the heart. �A clear head with a dead heart is a dead body, but all heart with no head is blind � you want both,� he says. �That is what I want to do for the American republic: I want to clear people's heads and warm people's hearts.� will do just that.