#6: Our Canon Becomes
our Plot.
If you were evacuated to another planet and could only take one book, upon which to base the teaching of your family and establishing right and wrong for your community, what would it be? Your answer is a good indication of what your national book might be. Are your companion books through life in line with your national book? What about your definitions of good and evil? Look at your life; is it in keeping with your canon?
These questions can be powerful as you analyze where to take the education of your children, your students, yourself. Perhaps the most important thing we can do to remain free and prosperous is to clarify a national book and live by it.
From the Founding through the end of World War II, the Bible and the Declaration were the U.S.'s national books. Even the great revolutions which occurred after 1945, such as increased freedom for minorities, were fueled by these two national books. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speeches center around them and quote them extensively.
America was based on them and became what it did because of them. Take them away, and America will become something very, very different.
The place to start is with yourself. Establish a clear canon and spend time in it every day. Become an expert on it, ponder it, put your life in line with it. Teach it to your family and then others. If you are a teacher, take it into your classroom.
If your faith doesn't include the Bible, use the Declaration or something of equal magnitude. Then broaden your knowledge to the other classics which support that central classic. Each nation is what it is due to its national books, and the choices you make now regarding books will have tremendous impact on what America will be twenty, forty and even sixty years from now.
Why Classics? 
