LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – As America’s 250th birthday celebrations get underway, one author and government expert wants to remind everyone about the Declaration of Independence.

America’s start.

“This is an absolutely fabulous country,” said Dr. Matthew Spalding on The Steve Gruber Show last week. “Every way we measure it gives us evidence of that. Immigrants flock here, people want to be here, businesses want to come here. People who were persecuted and are fleeing for religious reasons want to come here.”

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He added, “All that has to do with our beginning.”

Worth being celebrated.

Dr. Spalding knows something about America’s founding documents. He is the Vice President of Washington Operations and Dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College, and he testified before Congress in June about the Declaration of Independence. He calls it the greatest statement of human liberty ever written.

“The claim is not that we’re perfect,” Spalding said, pushing back on claims that the U.S. shouldn’t be honored or celebrated because of past policies. “The point is that the nation began with a Declaration of Independence that laid out a set of principles that we’ve aspired to for 250 years. We’ve made mistakes, we’re imperfect, but we’ve done great and noble things. That’s to be celebrated.”

A recent recipient of the ISI Conservative Book of the Year award for his book, The Making of the American Mind, Dr. Spalding argues the Declaration of Independence is the greatest statement of human liberty ever written. He also argues it is the common creed of our civic life and defines what it means to be an American citizen.

“Equal rights endowed by God.”

Spalding also pointed out America’s Christian roots. “[The founders] didn’t say, ‘We have some personal value judgments we’d like you to affirm for us.’ It begins, ‘We hold these truths,'” Spalding said, pointing out that moral subjectivism did not shape the nation’s founding document.

“[We] have equal rights that are endowed by God, our Creator,” Spalding said. “The government’s job is to secure those rights; the government does not give us those rights.”