Courtesy of PBS<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u201cMrs. Sullivan during World War II loses four sons on a battleship and we get \u2018Saving Private Ryan,\u2019 \u201d Burns said, referring to the 1998 Tom Hanks film. \u201c[Tanner] loses five sons. That\u2019s extraordinary, and all we have is just a line,\u201d he said, referring to historical lists of casualties.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have a picture of Rebecca, we don\u2019t know much about her at all, but we can try to tell the story, because it\u2019s really important.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those everyday, unsung minor characters \u2014 teenage boys running from home to fight, ne\u2019er-do-well militiamen, women organizing boycotts, military contractors stuffing their pockets \u2014 anchors the series and is a device Burns hopes will bring intimacy to the American Revolution beyond classroom tales of wooden teeth and cherry trees.<\/p>\n
Burns continued: \u201cI think all of the saccharine, fife and drum treacle that tends to cling to our Revolution\u2014it doesn\u2019t need to be that. It can be super complicated and that is to not diminish these great ideas, the best ideas. I think the Revolution is the most important event in world history after the birth of Christ, full stop.\u201d<\/p>\nThe American Revolution pitted brother against brother, but Burns doesn\u2019t want to turn \u201cloyalist\u201d into a pejorative, calling king-supporters the \u201cconservatives\u201d of the day. Courtesy of PBS<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nOverexposure of the Founding Fathers in pop culture led Burns to focus on the nuance and complexity of the Revolution era. Courtesy of PBS<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u201cBy telling a more complex story, those ideas are made bigger and more complicated. Democracy is not the intention of the Revolution. It\u2019s a consequence of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Highfalutin disputes over taxation and representation were very real in Revolutionary America, but the true power of the story is how that led to a discussion of natural rights \u2014 life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness \u2014 and how everyday people soon bought into the rhetoric.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis argument between Englishmen breaks out into natural rights. And all of a sudden, even though these are not self-evident \u2014 nobody\u2019s ever introduced them into the world before \u2014 we hold certain truths to be now <\/em>self-evident.<\/p>\n\u201cThat has a very powerful effect, not just for the guys who are writing it and expect to inherit the mantels of leadership if they\u2019re successful, if<\/em>, but among the people that are the so-called ordinary people,\u201d Burns said.<\/p>\n\u201cAnd that, to me, is a great story.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Documentary maker Ken Burns doesn\u2019t think today\u2019s polarized politics are anything new, especially for a country that, as he sees it, already had two civil wars \u2014 the American Revolution of 1776 and the 1861 war between the\u00a0Union and Confederacy. \u201cEvery era thinks they\u2019re Chicken Little, the sky is falling,\u201d Burns said in an interview […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2149846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25174],"tags":[382390,21741,353975,349110,354420,367112,22205],"class_list":["post-2149845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gossip","tag-american-revolution","tag-entertainment","tag-george-washington","tag-history","tag-ken-burns","tag-pbs","tag-television"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Ken-Burns-on-why-the-American-Revolution-is-the-most.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2149845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2149847,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149845\/revisions\/2149847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2149846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2149845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2149845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2149845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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