The Last Empire
Essays 1992-2000
Excerpt
Shredding the Bill of Rights
Most Americans of a certain age can recall exactly where they were and what they
were doing on October 20, 1964, when word came that Herbert Hoover was dead. The
heart and mind of a nation stopped. Bue how many recall when and how they first
became aware that one or another of the Bill of Rights had expired? For me, it
was sometime in 1960 at a party in Beverly Hills that I got the bad news from
the constitutionally cheery actor Cary Grant. He had just flown in from New
York. He had, he said, picked up his ticket at an airline counter in that
magical old-world airport, Idlewild, whose very name reflected our condition.
"There were these lovely girls behind the counter, and they were delighted to
help me, or so they said. I signed some autographs. Then I asked one of them for
my tickets. Suddenly she was very solemn. 'Do you have any identification?' she
asked." (Worldly friends tell me that the "premise" of this story is now the
basis of a series of TV commercials for Visa unse ... read full excerpt from Last Empire ebook
