When it comes to endowing the past with a sentimental glaze, few organizations have more expertly dispensed the pink-colored spun sugar than the Public Broadcasting Service. The latest example of politically correct history at the taxpayers’ expense is a nine-part, twelve-and-a-half-hour orgy of liberal myth-making called The West, which was shown nationwide on PBS in September. Directed and co-produced by Stephen Ives—a protégé of Ken Burns, who made his name bringing PBS’s special brand of saccharine to the Civil War a few years ago —this “documentary” about the settling of the American West is reviewed below by James Tuttleton. As Mr. Tuttleton shows, The West, though cinematically striking, is a congeries of PC clichés starring noble Indians (or “Native Americans”) who were at one with the land and themselves versus nasty white frontiersmen whose greed, rapacity, and ...

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