Los Angeles
15th November 2007

Bill O'Reilly
c/o HarperCollins
10 East 53 Street, 7th Floor
New York NY 10022-5299

Mr O'Reilly (and Mr Flowers),

This surely is not the first letter you've had about this, but just in case,
I thought I'd send it to you anyway.  I refer to your first sentence on 
page 16 of your recent book, Kids Are Americans Too (the First 
Edition, 2007): For openers, the Constitution does not 
guarantee all of us "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
That language is found in the Declaration of Independence, written
a little more than a decade earlier (1776).  With all due respect,
this is an egregious error for a book published by so reputable
a company as William Morrow/HarperCollins, not to mention
the fact that 1) it is a basic element of American History that the
kids you (rightly) value so much may now get wrong, and 2) you
base some of your other arguments on this mistake.

The implications are much greater than you might think.
Can you imagine someone invoking "the pursuit of happiness"
as a Constitutional right?  Personally, I think it would be a
great idea and should become the next Amendment (instead
of the Federal Marriage Amendment which you subtly advocate
on pp.18 and 52, where you imply that such an amendment is 
pending), but somehow I don't think you'd like that scenario 
all that much.

Elsewhere in your book, your obvious bias against the ACLU 
is a serious compromise to the integrity of your premise.  
But then, the premise of telling kids about their rights is 
already compromised by the lack of clarity on that issue in 
your book.  What your book does somewhat better -- though 
still not worthy of your audience, because it isn't developed 
enough -- is give a summary-level civics lesson about how 
government works.

Finally I will say, as an educator myself, that the style you've
chosen for your presentation is ill-advised.  It tends to "dumb-
down" the language and put kids in a position of requiring
less discipline of themselves as a reader, and of expecting
more MTV-type stimulation from their schools and other
sources of information before they reach the motivation
threshold necessary for learning and retention.  It's regrettable,
and would have been improved perhaps by a compromise 
between a literate academic approach and a toned-down
informal style.  But then, you may know your audience better
than I -- or you may be directing your work to a different
audience than I assume it to be.

I have done some research in the area of young people's
rights for I, too, write advice for children and teens.
Without comment on their positions or slants, I can 
suggest the following somewhat older sources 
to broaden your perspective, if you're interested:

   Richard Farson.  Birthrights: A Bill of Rights for Children.
   New York: Macmillan, 1974

   Beatrice Gross and Ronald Gross (Editors).  The Children's
   Rights Movement: Overcoming the Oppression of Young
   People.  Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday,
   1977.

   Hyman Rodman, Susan H. Lewis and Saralyn B. Griffith.  
   The Sexual Rights of Adolescents: Competence, Vulnerability,
   and Parental Control.  New York: Columbia University Press,
   1984.

I'm putting your book next to these on my shelf.  Hillary Rodham
Clinton's It Takes a Village (2006) is already there!

Constructively,



Gerald Jones, Ph.D.
<&c., &c.>