Ken Burns: America’s Founders Would Be 'Abjectly Disappointed' by Congress Today

On Sunday, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” documentary filmmaker Ken Burns said America’s Founding Fathers would be “abjectly disappointed” by Congress giving up its power to the executive branch.

Burns said, “The Founders put as Article I, not the executive, that’s Article II they would not be surprised that someone was seeking more power. They would be abjectly disappointed that Article I, the legislative branch had an abdicated so much power. We’re creating a new thing called citizen. Jefferson said in that document, all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable. Meaning all of human history, we’ve put up with the authoritarian rule. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t provide for human happiness. Here’s our idea of how to put this forward. Because it’s the enlightenment, because things had not changed for people for thousands of years. You worked the same plot of land for thousands of years in England, or Ireland, and all of a sudden, you had this possibility of freedom. In common sense, Thomas Paine says not since the time of Noah, did we have a chance to remake the world. So there is a biblical sense of our destiny of creating a place where human beings can reset and say, we hold these truths to be self-evident. They’re not self-evident. They’d never been tried, but this is what we’re going to try.”

Host Kristen Welker said, “What do you think the Founding Fathers, the people who lived and fought during the American Revolution would think if they could see this country today? This country, this democracy that they fought and gave their lives for?”

Burns said, “They’d be totally impressed in lots of ways. They’d be stunned, maybe, and shocked at how much rights had been extended to people, and glad about it. George Washington knew slavery was wrong.Thomas Jefferson knew slavery was wrong.”

Follow Pam Key on X @pamkeyNEN