The following remarks were delivered by Dr. Matthew Spalding at the Freedom 250 Mobile Museum kickoff event in Summerfield, North Carolina, on Jan. 21.
It is great to be with you on this wonderful occasion.
But I must point out that we wouldn’t be here today, were it not for those remarkable Americans who gave us a country to celebrate.
Unlike other countries, America’s ends are to be found in its beginnings.
In 1776, when it announced itself to the world, America was little more than thirteen small colonies on a barren continent, thousands of miles from their ancestral homeland, surrounded by hostile powers.
Ours is the story of a band of patriots who united together to declare independence from—and declare war against—the most powerful nation in the world.
At its birth, our Founders justified independence and nationhood by asserting self-evident truths. Working from the great principle of human equality, they claimed political legitimacy based on the consent of the governed.
Appointed Commander in Chief of a bunch of untrained militia, General George Washington led a continental army to the unlikely military victory that began this noble experiment in popular government.
This is that story.
Built to Last
Through a carefully written constitution, our Founders created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law.
They sought to establish religious liberty, provide for economic opportunity, secure national independence, and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government—all in the name of a simple but radical idea of human liberty.
This is that story.
What is truly revolutionary about America is that, for the first time in human history, universal ideas about man became the foundation for a particular nation and a particular system of government and its political culture. It was because of these principles, not despite them, that, rather than ending in tyranny, the American Revolution culminated in a constitutional government that has long endured.
Well over two centuries later—having won its independence from the British Empire, established its sovereign nationhood, completed its continental expansion and brought unprecedented prosperity to its citizens, survived a devastating Civil War that threatened its very life, abolished slavery and raised up the emancipated to be citizens equal to their one-time masters, and triumphed in two world wars fought on foreign soil and a decades-long struggle against worldwide communism—the United States has become the freest, wealthiest, and most powerful nation in the world.
This is our story.
Principles That Define and Inspire
To this day, so many years after the American Revolution, the principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and promulgated by the United States Constitution still define us as a nation and inspire us as a people. They are responsible for a prosperous and just nation unlike any in the world. They are the highest achievements of our tradition, serving not only as a powerful beacon to those throughout the world who strive for freedom but also a warning to tyrants and despots everywhere. It is because of these principles, not despite them, that America has achieved its greatness.
America is a good country, a great country, perhaps the greatest, not because it is perfect—it is made up of imperfect human beings—but because it is dedicated to, and constantly aspires to uphold, permanent principles about human liberty that are true.
Through its noble efforts to achieve its highest ends, this country has done more to advance those principles than any other.
America is beautiful not only for its spacious skies and amber waves of grain, as the patriotic hymn goes, but also for its “glory-tale of liberating strife.”
This is what unites us.
This is what makes America exceptional.
I vividly remember America’s bicentennial celebration in 1976. I was in Middle School, and remember the fireworks, and the Tall Ships, and the Freedom Train. All that deepened my love of country and sparked my love of history. Today I write books and teach about America to my students at Hillsdale College.
Rediscover America
Given the opportunity to help create the Freedom Trucks all these years later, I jumped at the chance to tell America’s story, one that would capture the heart, spark the imagination, and instruct the mind of my fellow Americans.
I want to thank our friends at PragerU and Spevco for bringing that story to life in the Freedom Trucks, and Freedom 250 for taking the story, the story of the American people, on the road.
We are now in the 250th year of our country’s life.
I invite all Americans to take this unique opportunity to learn—or perhaps relearn—our history, to discover anew the truths to which it is dedicated, and to fall in love with America again, or perhaps for the first time.
