Ken Burns: We Are Being Told to Abbreviate Our Past, ‘To Make it Only Positive’

EXCERPT:

K. BURNS: "They're not asking us Americans to look into our past, as complex as all pasts are, just as every individual understands the complexity of the dynamics of their families and their family’s history. We're not being asked to look at it, we're being told to abbreviate it, to make it only positive, to just have it be, you know, a sunshine story and to not even do that. As you say, these are all examples of a deep and abiding insecurity. The greatness doesn’t need it. The best memorial there is in all of Washington is the Lincoln Memorial, it’s one of the most extraordinary places on the face of the earth, which will be cheapened by some of the activities of this thing. The monument will survive. But Lincoln, like Washington, needed no monument in his lifetime. He wasn’t worried about what it was that people would do to build in honor of him. And I would just say those two men's contributions, and many many others, are significant of heralding and that you have to get, again, past the presidency for the country to judge, not for you to judge how great you are."