if anyone had telled with harry jaffa, it's a job. but harry jaffa is a brilliant man and a brilliant historian and his -- the point of his life is that the declaration of independence is the central document of the american revolution. and, therefore, of american history. and i have to say the more i have read about that period confirms what harry argues. i tell a story of a lunch that bill invited me to. he was going to meet harry at paonis and we got there first and, you know, harry comes in a little late but bill had said in passing in a column, you know, if the british -- if george iii had captured george washington he would have been justified in hanging him as a rebellious subject and harry started in before he even sat down, you know, bill, if he's rebelling in a cause of justice, how can it be justice to hang and him on and on and on and before the salad came, he had bill saying, well, right, you're right, harry, you're wrong to say that. and, you know, that's harry's relentlessness but i think it was his grasp of a very impo

led by a man named harry jaffa. we got into the american revolution through lincoln. he actually wrote a very good book. the implication in the book is that lincoln saved and corrected things in the american revolution. that it was flawed when it was put together. later, working backwards from lincoln, he came to see that lincoln never said that. lincoln was right in what he said. an abstract truth to all men in all times to be a stumbling block. to the harbingers of reappearing tyranny. lincoln said that and it is a paraphrase of what he said. it is close. we thought, read this stuff. the united states of america had a beautiful beginning, and is being forgotten. so we had the idea that we would start a think tank. what do we know about anything? we did that, and we would teach people and remind people, including in the context of policy disputes, about the meaning and tradition of america. that has been going on for a long time now. who funds it? a lot of people. the bradley foundation, that davis prize last night is a founder of it. the john olin foundation, which