Ken Burns

It obviously brings out the worst.

We're the most dangerous species on this planet, clearly.

But it brings out the best.

And it's worth pursuing.

And I think particularly when you take – most recently we spent so many years studying the American Revolution.

We kind of accept the violence of the Civil War.

We accept the violence of the 20th century wars.

But the –

American Revolution, you know, they're in breeches and they're in stockings and they have wigs and the ideas are too important.

We don't want to admit that this was as bloody per capita as our civil war, that it was in fact a civil war in ways that even our civil war wasn't.

Our civil war was a sectional war, north and south, and that

We were forged in violence, and it's okay.

Those ideas, those big ideas that we seemingly want to protect by putting in a bug in amber, guys in Philadelphia thinking great thoughts, it doesn't in any way get diminished.

In fact, it enlarges.

It makes them more inspiring and more exhilarating, the understanding that

What happened when our country was formed is one of the most important events in the entire history of humankind.

I mean, you and I were talking about some of the punctuated equilibriums of comets or meteors or striking this, you know, ice ages.

I mean, Ecclesiastes, the Old Testament says there's nothing new under the sun.

And I agree with that.

Human nature doesn't change.