Stu Bykofsky: A civics lesson with Richard Dreyfuss

"THERE IS A LAW in the United States that says you can't leave show business," Richard Dreyfuss was telling me after breakfast in the Rittenhouse Hotel's Lacroix restaurant.

The "can't leave" law exists in the snowy-haired actor's imagination, but there have been enough showbiz "comebacks" (wanted or unwanted) to make it seem like fact.

We were talking the morning after he headlined a program promoting civics at the National Constitution Center sponsored by WPHT/1210-AM, a right-wing station that seems an odd fit for a left-wing activist, but Dreyfuss told me he's kicked his uber-liberal baggage to the curb.

In Act 2 of his life, what he is doing - promoting civics and education - is something he knew since the age of 12 he'd be doing as a seasoned citizen.

Act 1 was about fame. He wanted to be a movie star, "but a movie star of the '30s and '40," when it embodied style, class, panache. He did become a star, but not the star of his fantasy because the world had moved on, devolving from class to crass. It's hard for a short Jewish kid from Brooklyn, N.Y., to morph into Cary Grant, but he did win an Oscar as the male lead in "The Goodbye Girl."

"Until I was 27 years old, I never had a friend who was not an actor. Since I was 27, I never had a friend who was an actor. Not one," said Dreyfuss, now 63 and comfortably potbellied.

Although "retired," Dreyfuss does accept the odd acting job, and what could be more odd than the liberal lefty playing Dick Cheney, the rock-ribbed righty, as he did in 2008's "W"?

Dreyfuss hates Cheney like global warming, and that feeling is nearly matched by his disdain for three of America's Capitals of Liberalism - New York, Washington and Los Angeles.

"D.C. and New York share the idea that if the idea is not born here, you're a simpleton and a rube," he said.

In L.A., the "the subtlest poison" is the notion that you can work for two years and make a billion dollars. It's what Alfred Hitchcock would call the MacGuffin," the coveted thing that spurs a character into action, regardless of risk or consequence.

Hitting that jackpot "is rare, but you can - and when that's true," Dreyfuss warned, his voice getting dramatic, "hold on to your soul, because you'll end up with a knife dripping blood and it's in your hand."

There's no denying Dreyfuss' devotion to civics, a small word with a big meaning that he defined as understanding "how to run the country." He passionately proclaims his unabashed love of country - this country. The Far Left usually brays that even wearing a flag lapel pin is goose-stepping jingoism.

Bluntly, Dreyfuss called our loss of civics "a declaration of war against us" by our own educational system and government. On this subject, and a couple of others, I can picture Dreyfuss in a tri-corner Colonial hat, waving a tea bag in the air.

For various reasons, most people become more conservative as they age. Dreyfuss now calls himself a centrist, but during our conversation, as he bounced bricks off Cheney, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and George W. Bush, I wondered if he really is "centered."

So I asked Scot Faulkner, a conservative who is executive director of the Dreyfuss Initiative, where he'd plot his boss on a political graph.

"Richard is very centrist," Faulkner said. "In some policy areas - American exceptionalism, Federal Reserve, government spending and waste - he is as conservative as I am."

The Dreyfuss Initiative is a nonprofit founded by the actor to reinvigorate America's civic culture, which Dreyfuss said created a "meritocracy and we became the political miracle that we are. And this miracle is still known to the entire world, except to our own children, who aren't taught about it anymore."

He bemoaned the loss of ancillary skills such as reason, logic and clarity of thought. "We are not trained to ask questions; we are not trained to have a sense of authority and ownership of the country."

Dreyfuss is correct. If you can't see it in the muddleheaded beliefs held by too many Americans (President Obama is not a U.S. citizen; the government spread AIDS in black neighborhoods, etc.) you see civic disengagement in appallingly low voter turnout.

It should be frightening to Americans. The fear should be nonpartisan. Also, the cure.

"The more I got into this issue, the more I realized that partisanship" erodes support for good ideas; it's counterproductive, said Dreyfuss.

"We have never, ever, ever, ever elected anything other than a centrist, from Ronald Reagan to Andy Jackson. Those two men were centrists," he said. "Even though they may not have looked like it at the time, they were."

The Dreyfuss Initiative's goal is to revive the teaching of civics in schools, then follow that by teaching kids to develop a brain toolbox filled with logic, ethics, analysis and civil discourse.

It's a worthy goal for Act 2, but given the poisonous political landscape, it might be harder to get than an Academy Award.

Email stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. See Stu on Facebook. For recent columns:

www.philly.com/Byko.