This is an opinion column.

When we arrived in Washington, my daughter was confused why I wanted her to see what she called “paperwork” when there was a building with real dinosaurs across the street.

This was the handiwork that created our country, I told her, and this faded one over here guaranteed our freedoms, I said. Explaining the First Amendment to a 6-year-old can be a challenge.

“Does this mean I get to say the d-word?” she asked.

Ehhh… Uhm …

“Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!” she chanted until I made clear there are limits until she is older, and if she didn’t stop, there would be no gift shop.

The National Archives was built, like many things in D.C., as a temple to an American myth, and each year more than a million people pass through the dim rotunda, filing one-by-one past the br

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