Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns says Americans are going into the nation’s 250th anniversary worried about the future. “Americans are so anxious about the future,” Burns told Meet the Press moderator Kristin Welker. “Will there be another 250, or another ten years, you know?”
“I think that that kind of existential, fraught moment gives us an opportunity to allow the story of the American Revolution, the complicated story of the American Revolution, to help us understand,” Burns said on a special edition of Meet the Press focused on the nation’s milestone birthday, coming at a time when the country’s divisions seem to be manifesting in every imaginable way, even how we celebrate this noteworthy Fourth of July.
“I mean, history is our best teacher, and it can be a helpful guide for everybody, no matter your disposition, political orientation, age, whatever it is,” Burns said. “History can be an incredibly important way to digest the present and then figure out what your response is and to imagine a future together.”
‘History can give us perspective, it can give us solace. I really think it can give us hope’
In an interview with presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Welker pressed on where the country goes from here, with celebrations in Washington seen by many as political and focused on President Trump.
“I think the most important thing is to remember the difficult times that we’ve lived in before,” Goodwin said. “We’re living in a tough time right now, but history can give us perspective, it can gives us solace. I really think it can give us hope.”
Goodwin pointed to the Civil War, the Great Depression and the early days of World War II as times when Americans endured fear, anxiety and doubt about the future. “And the important thing to know is that in each one of those times, the people who lived then, they didn’t know the end of their story,” she told Welker. “So they lived with the same worries that we are, but somehow we showed strength, and we emerged with greatest strength from each one of those troubles.”
‘No matter the challenge, American has an opportunity to sort of come together, find hope, find common ground’
In a conversation with Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie Bunch, Welker pointed out a favorite item in the Smithsonian’s collection, an NBC microphone President Roosevelt used during his fireside chats.
“One of the things that I think is so powerful about America is one of our aspirations is hope,” Bunch said. “I mean, the notion of, in the Great Depression, America worried about, is it going to survive?”
“And suddenly you have FDR utilizing the newest technologies of the day, and basically coming into people’s homes and giving them hope. Saying that, ‘We can do this together.’ And so for me, when I think of a single object that speaks of hope, nothing more than the NBC microphone.”
“And I think that’s one of the most powerful things about hope, is that no matter the challenge, America has an opportunity to sort of come together, find hope, find common ground. At least that’s what I believe.”
‘The next chapter of American democracy’
The special edition of Meet the Press airs Sunday, fifty years after the program marked the 1976 bicentennial with another special edition featuring governors from three of the first 13 states of the Union.
Then–as again this week–the focus is on “two and a half centuries of the American experiment from the nation’s founding to the next chapter of American democracy,” Welker said.