Ken Burns Gives America the Wrong Parents

Every few years, someone tells us the United States is not really the child of the long tradition of republicanism, English common law, colonial self-government, the natural rights principles enshrined in our Declaration, and the debates involving the framing of a new government that transpired in Philadelphia after the war. No, we’re subtly led to assume that our political father is someone else entirely: this time, it’s the Haudenosaunee—the Iroquois Confederacy.