George’s paternal grandfather was an immigrant from Syria, and his maternal grandfather emigrated to America from southern Italy. His father fought in World War II, first in Normandy and Brittany and then in Germany and Austria. Despite their different life experiences, George says, they were bound together by their “allegiance to the principles of republican democracy as set forth in the Declaration and the Constitution.”
Citizens, however, can give their “allegiance to a set of principles as embodied in a constitutional order” only if they understand “those principles and that order.” George worries that too many younger Americans are “woefully ignorant not only of their national history but also of the principles and institutions of the American constitutional order,” a situation that suggests “a profound failing of civic education at every level.”
