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I don't have time to write a proper post, but I wanted to bring this to your attention. First of all, when Ken Burns announced that he was going to do a documentary about the American Revolution, I felt queasy. I imagined how much damage he could do. Now released, it appears my fears were well-founded. Dan McLaughlin has a very good article up on NRO (please read the whole thing) in which he begins by pointing out that Mr. Burns states, in the opening monologue of the multi-part series, that the American Founders based our system of government on that of the Six Nations of the Iroquois. He also leaves out several other influences on our Founders:
While there is time to discuss the Haudenosaunee, there’s no mention of Magna Carta or the Glorious Revolution. No time is given to Locke or Montesquieu, or to the ancient Greek democracies or the Roman Republic, the birth and death of which fixated the Founders (hence, the popularity of Joseph Addison’s 1713 play Cato). There’s nothing on the Mayflower Compact or the 1619 founding of the Virginia House of Burgesses, both made by men who had doubtless not yet heard much if anything about Native Americans in upstate New York. The Founding Fathers are extracted entirely from the context of the English political culture, the Scottish Enlightenment, and the classics.
You can’t make this mistake by accident. Few people in history have left behind a richer record of what they were thinking than the American Founders.
Another extraordinary lie that Mr. Burns felt the need to tell was to blame George Washington for firing the shot that started the French & Indian War:
Describing the initial encounter between the Virginia militia and a French expeditionary force in 1754 that escalated into the global Seven Years War, Burns tells us that George Washington was said by one Native American witness to be the first “to shoot into the enemy’s encampment. . . . If so, George Washington fired the very first shot of a global conflict.” From there, Burns proceeds directly to the war, known here as the French and Indian War.
Just like our nation being inspired by Native American ethics and political systems, this is not quite true either:
After the initial volley, the French leader (Ensign Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville) tried to surrender, but while Washington was considering the ultimatum Jumonville had been tasked to deliver to him, Washington’s Native American ally Tanaghrisson rushed forward, split Jumonville’s head open with a hatchet, and washed his hands in Jumonville’s brains.
Tanaghrisson had been raised among the Seneca (one of the Iroquois Six Nations) after being abducted into them as a child. He held a tenuous political position within the broader Iroquois world, which for complicated reasons I won’t reiterate here gave him an independent motive to provoke a conflict between the British and the French. No serious historian thinks that he was acting at Washington’s bidding.
But to attribute the war to a Native American tomahawking a defenseless European officer during a parley would apparently disturb the story Burns wants to tell. So, that part had to go, leaving Washington holding the hatchet. So much for history.
The whole article is outstanding. Please do check it out in detail.
But the basic point is simple. Hollywood despises America and Western Civilization. And their influence is enormous.
Mr. Burns is no fool. He seeks to destroy that which he hates. Why else would he lie so blatantly about such important things? Is he really more sympathetic to the Indian soldier who split a defenseless officer's head open while he was trying to surrender than he is to the American Revolutionaries, who prosecuted their own men for dumping tea into a harbor? Mr. Burns is not stupid. He knows what he's doing.
He's been told his entire life that smart and virtuous people hate America. So he hates America, like he's supposed to. And he has enormous influence. He doesn't even have to find funding to advertise this - he has CNN and every other left-wing news organization on the planet. Which is most of them. This "documentary" will be widely viewed by millions of people who think they're watching a documentary.
Excerpts of this "documentary" will be shown to impressionable young students - by teachers they respect - for decades. Millions and millions of students. After all, it's a documentary, right?
A republic, if you can keep it. - Ben Franklin
Civilizations die from suicide, not murder. - Arnold Toynbee
Discussion (56)
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I watched The Civil War when it came out. I started Baseball, but blew it off after it became a melodrama. I've only assayed chunks of Jazz because after what Burns did with Baseball must have been far worse.
Yeah, Burns knows what he's doing. I liked him better before he was a genius.
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His series on Country Music is quite good. That's the only one I bother with.
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The same would apply to the “Mingo” … one of the Half King’s men … who says Washington fired the first shot..
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Ken Burns has always been a Leftie. It's such an outrage when he contradicts history, misleading all those people who think that because it's a documentary, it must be true. Sad.
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The Civil War was well worth watching if only to listen to the late Shelby Foote. What I got from Burns's Jazz was that the only decent jazz musicians were black and that white jazz musicians and composers were really second rate.
Burns isn't an historian. He's a leftist propagandist.
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