CBS Evening News anchor John Dickerson sits down with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns for an exclusive interview

WASHINGTON (CBS, KYMA/KECY) - The American Revolution was one of the most significant events in world history because it created a "new thing called a citizen," iconic filmmaker Ken Burns told CBS News, as the nation celebrates the Fourth of July exactly one year before its 250 birthday.

"I think the American Revolution is the most important event since the birth of Christ in all of world history…I mean, it turned the world upside down," Burns told CBS News' John Dickerson in an interview which aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" Sunday.

Before the war that secured the American colonies' independence from Great Britain, "everyone was a subject, essentially under the rule of somebody else," Burns said.

The colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.

"We had created in this moment a very brand new thing called a citizen, and this has had powerful effects," he said. "It's going to set in motion revolutions for the next two plus centuries, all around the world, all attempting to sort of give a new expression to this idea that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that's a big, big deal in world history."

Burns, whose upcoming film "The American Revolution" is expected to air on PBS on November 16, also reflected on some of the "complicated stories" in America's short history.

"The greatness of the American people comes from telling these complicated stories, and that's a good story," he said. "We want to feel that we know who Thomas Jefferson is. We need to understand the internal struggles that Abraham Lincoln had. We have to understand what was going through Rosa Parks' mind when she, you know, refused to give up her seat on the bus."

Trying to understand these stories "in no way takes away from the glory," Burns added.

"It just makes the story fuller and richer and permits purchase for everyone," he said. "You want a history to be complicated because it gives everybody a chance to own or have access to it."

Citing scholar Maggie Blackhawk, an NYU law professor who appears in his upcoming film, Burns said the Declaration of Independence is "deeply significant to people at the margins" even though the words of the original document don't include them.

"They do not include women, they do not include the poor, they do not include any enslaved or free African Americans. They do not include Native Americans," he said. "But the words themselves are so inspirational that they begin to suggest a much larger and more, what we would say, kind of American polity. That a bunch of us all together, of different varieties, doing lots of different things and pursuing happiness, this idea of virtue and lifelong learning."

During the interview, Dickerson and Burns talked about the future of the Public Broadcasting System.

In May, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at cutting money to the National Public Radio (NPR) and PBS.

In response, NPR CEO Katherine Maher and PBS CEO Paula Kerger spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation that month saying they are both looking at legal options.

When asked if he was worried about the future of PBS, Burns said, " Of course, I am, and I've always been worried about it. In the 1990s, I think I testified in the House or the Senate in Appropriations or Authorization about the endowments or about the Corporation for Public Broadcasting a half dozen times."

This prompted Dickerson to ask Burns to make a case for PBS, with Burns saying:

"It is the Declaration of Independence applied to the communications world. It's a bottom up. It's the largest network in the country. There's 330 stations. It mostly serves, and this is where the elimination of funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is so short sighted, it mainly serves rural areas in which the PBS signal may be the only signal they get. They also have not only our good children's and prime time stuff, they have classroom on the air continuing education, Homeland Security, crop reports, weather emergency information. That we're going to take away? This seems foolhardy and seems misguided, mainly because there is a perception among a handful of people that this is somehow a blue or a left wing thing, when this is the place that, for 32 years, gave William F. Buckley a show, right? I mean...that show is, by the way, is still going on and moderated by a conservative. So I just think that maybe we're throwing the baby out with the bath water. And I couldn't do...let me personalize it, and I didn't want to. I couldn't do any of the films I've done without them being on PBS. I could go into a streaming service or a premium cable tomorrow and get every one of the millions of dollars it took to do this in one pitch, but they wouldn't give me 10 years. They want it in a year or a year and a half, and that's the deal. I can't do that. Same with Vietnam, same with the Civil War, same with Jazz, same with the National Parks, same with, you know, the Roosevelts, all of those...Country Music, all of those have taken time to incubate, and that has been under the system that has one foot tentatively in the marketplace and the other proudly out, kind of like the National Parks or the Declaration of Independence applied to the landscape. These are really good American institutions that represent everybody from the bottom up, which is what it's always about. That's the essence of what Thomas Jefferson was talking about."

To watch Dickerson's full interview with Burns, click here.