Freedom

Heroes of 1776 Shows That Remembering the Past Is Key to Progress

Neil Gorsuch's new book reminds us that to accelerate progress, we must first acknowledge the progress that has already occurred.

Nick Gillespie | 5.11.2026 9:45 AM

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A couple of interviews I've conducted for Reason in the past few weeks have been rattling around in my head, even though the two people involved—actor-director Andy Serkis and Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch—couldn't be more different. Between them, they underscore why we need to understand the past better if we're going to make any sense of the present and build a better future.

As a performer, Serkis has given life to, among other characters, Gollum, King Kong, and polio-addled proto-punk icon Ian Dury. He's also the director of a new animated adaptation of George Orwell's Animal Farm, which is getting taken to the woodshed over at Rotten Tomatoes, where it sports a lowly 26 percent on the Tomatometer. Gorsuch, who joined the Court in 2017, has just coauthored a children's book. Heroes of 1776 covers the writing, passage, and distribution of the Declaration of Independence.

In my conversation with Serkis, we tangled over questions about history and progress. His Animal Farm swaps out the Soviet context of Orwell's original and the villain shifts from Joseph Stalin to an expansionist billionaire seeking to take over the farm and build a giant corporate campus. That updating makes the allegory incoherent for several reasons, not least of which is the obvious difference between the ultimate example of totalitarian state coercion and…what, Amazon's ridiculously forgiving returns policy or its........

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