One thing that’s rare to see in Hollywood is honesty.

When we see it, it tends to touch us. We saw that in the acceptance speech of Ke Huy Quan when he won Best Supporting Actor in a Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes. We saw it from Brendan Fraser at the Critics Choice Awards. They were both so grateful and happy that after a long time “in the wilderness,” they were given a chance to act again and prove themselves in the roles in which they shined.

But Richard Dreyfuss is showing us something else again with his quest. Maybe that’s because even though he worked in Hollywood, he was never “of Hollywood.” The man we know from many movies, the man who had a pretty fulfilling career, one would think — from “Jaws” to “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” and everything in between — has a quest.

Not to get people to see him acting again. He’s given up acting. His quest is for people to see America again, to recognize what we all have been given by this special gift of being Americans, to appreciate our Constitution, and to study civics so that we know what we have been given, and what we must preserve.

You’ve got to get kids in love with “those values,” Dreyfuss told Glenn Beck during a lengthy interview, but “they have been gone from the curriculum for fifty years.” Dreyfuss called out the failure to teach those founding documents. “That’s the core problem,” he said. “They have no idea about the Constitution, they have no idea about the Bill of Rights. None.”

Dreyfuss has a new book out called “One Thought Scares Me.” What is that thought? “We teach our children what we wish them to know, we don’t teach them what we don’t wish them to know.” “It meant that they’ve taken it out. They’ve taken civics out because we don’t want you to be a participating citizen.”

Indeed, they wish us to go along with whatever the narrative of the day is, and not knowing our rights and upon what we are founded makes it easier to manipulate us. If you wonder why kids are growing up and turning to hate America, that’s a big part of it. It’s not just the influence of their college professors indoctrinating them, it’s the failure to know on what we are based, from grade school and high school education.

.@RichardDreyfuss tells me he gave up acting "ONLY for something I loved as much, which was saving my country…It infuriates me that people don't understand what this place means." pic.twitter.com/Zxshkqa0aJ

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) January 16, 2023

Dreyfuss said, “I’d given up something I loved, and had loved since I was nine years old [acting], only for something else I loved as much — which was saving my country. And I firmly believe if we don’t revive the study of civics, we will be dead before 2050.”

“Long before,” Beck interrupted.

“We’ll have the same name, and it will be a nightmare,” Dreyfuss said.

“I had led a blessed life. And I gave it up. For a blessed life,” Dreyfuss continued. “It infuriates me that people don’t understand what this place means, what an advance on human progress this country is all about. And how quickly we can abandon it, without, without a second thought.

A chilling thought. But it’s also a stirring one, an inspiring one because there’s a clear path that he’s taking, that we all should be taking to stop it and get it back.

We may remember Richard Dreyfuss for “Jaws” but what a great thing he’s now committed to, for the benefit of us all.