The filmmaker and historian Ken Burns has produced some of the best documentaries ever shown on American television. He has brought history to life with gripping stories of people and momentous events. He is the master of the voice of ordinary people, many of whom are extraordinary.

He recently gave the Commencement speech at Brandeis University. It’s one of the best I have ever read or heard. Here is the link. Read it or listen to it. It’s magnificent.

A memorable paragraph about the current moment:

There is no real choice this November. There is only the perpetuation, however flawed and feeble you might perceive it, of our fragile 249-year-old experiment or the entropy that will engulf and destroy us if we take the other route. When, as Mercy Otis Warren would say, “The checks of conscience are thrown aside and a deformed picture of the soul is revealed.” The presumptive Republican nominee is the opioid of all opioids, an easy cure for what some believe is the solution to our myriad pains and problems. When in fact with him, you end up re-enslaved with an even bigger problem, a worse affliction and addiction, “a bigger delusion”, James Baldwin would say, the author and finisher of our national existence, our national suicide as Mr. Lincoln prophesies. Do not be seduced by easy equalization. There is nothing equal about this equation. We are at an existential crossroads in our political and civic lives. This is a choice that could not be clearer.