Ken Burns

You know, I mean, there was a letter that didn't make it into the film, but Jefferson's trapped during the Constitutional Convention in Paris.

And he writes to Madison, who's writing the code.

The Constitution is not prose, except for the preamble written by Gouverneur Morris in New York.

But he says, what if someone should lose an election and pretend false votes and reap the whirlwind?

I mean, they were trying to reverse engineer for all the things.

Oh my God, four pieces of paper still.

That's exactly what I was just going to say.

Yuval Levin, the conservative scholar, told me the founders would not be surprised at someone who was seeking monarchical powers.

All of it made sense.

It's that Article 1, the first article.

that article two is the executive.

That's the manager of what article one did.

And the third article is the judicial that is going to judge this and pass on it is that they had abdicated their power.

That would be the great overwhelming disappointment on the part of the founders.

If they look, they'd be happy that we'd survived, surprised at so many of the changes and not surprised that there could be, you know, uh, power grabs.

And you had a complex modern world, a 20th century that is going to be within 10 or 15 years working at a kind of lightning speed that always makes the argument of authoritarians that I need to decide this in advance of your cumbersome democratic process.

Trust me.

But I would say it's been most noticeable in the last few years where you go down the century.

And if you're able, whether it's real or not.

The manufacturer of fear in a populace allows them to say, OK, please, Mussolini, make the trains run on time for me, please.