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April 16, 2009
Exclusive: Review: The 5000 Year Leap – The 28 Great Ideas That Changed the World by W. Cleon Skousen
The 5000 Year Leap by W. Cleon Skousen is revitalizing Americans today just as it did 30 years ago when Skousen first published it. Skousen’s style is polished and clear, and his subject matter is a succinct discussion of the brilliance of our founding documents and those who created them, our Founding Fathers.
Americans again find themselves adrift with little or no knowledge of American history, the founding documents, or the anchoring principles of the United States of America. This lack of attachment to any solid principles, coupled with today’s political climate of change and uncertainty, has left Americans with a floating feeling of anxiety and distrust. Although they are not exactly sure why, they fear that too much change might be destroying our Constitution. They are right.
Enter The 5000 Year Leap. This marvelous book reminds us that our Founding Fathers created a country based not on the left’s Rulers Law (Tyranny), nor on the right’s No Law (Anarchy). In the middle of this continuum, there is the People’s Law. The book informs us that Americans need to take back their power and return to the fundamentals…the People’s Law. “It was in America that the Founding Fathers assembled the 28 great ideas that produced the dynamic success formula which provided such a sensational blessing to modern man.” No government did this; people did.
The book’s resurgence comes at a time when a grassroots movement is surging in America. Americans are feeling a desperate need to study, to understand, and to reinvigorate the principles of our Constitution in their lives and especially in their government. While Kousen is no longer living, his establishment of the National Center for Constitutional Studies is thriving. Why? The 5000 Year Leap is enjoying an incredible resurgence of interest by Americans anxious to anchor themselves in the principals of our “Shining City on the Hill.”
The book reminds us that the Founding Fathers continually warned about leaning neither too right nor too left but to maintain a balanced Constitutional center. They warned against drifting toward the collectivist left. They warned against the ‘welfare state’ where the government endeavors to take care of everyone from the cradle to the grave. In addition, confiscatory taxation and deficit spending were untenable to our Founders. Never was one generation to add to the tax burden of succeeding generations. The framers of the Constitution believed the only way to a prosperous nation was to have equal protection of rights, not equal distribution of things.
We hear in this book Samuel Adams’ warnings against collectivism. “The Utopian schemes of the leveling of wealth and a community of goods [central ownership of the means of production and distribution] are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the Crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government, unconstitutional.”
The clarity with which Skousen discusses all 28 basic principles of the Founding Fathers and Founding documents educates Americans hungry for knowledge of the foundations of the United States government. The basic principles are presented succinctly with interpretations from our Founders themselves, and they are not to miss. These principles illustrate the complexity of our government and the brilliance with which it was founded. They are:
1. The Genius of Natural Law
2. A Virtuous and Moral People
3. Virtuous and Moral Leaders
4. The Role of Religion
5. The Role of the Creator
6. All Men are Created Equal
7. Equal Rights, Not Equal Things
8. Man’s Unalienable Rights
9. The Role of Revealed Law
10. Sovereignty of the People
11. Who Can Alter the Government
12. Advantages of a Republic
13. Protection Against Human Frailty
14. Property Rights Essential to Liberty
15. Free-market Economic
16. The Separation of Powers
17. Checks and Balances
18. Importance of a Written Constitution
19. Limiting and Defining the Powers of Government
20. Majority Rule, Minority Rights
21. Strong Local Self-government
22. Government by Law, Not by Men
23. Importance of an Educated Electorate
24. Peace Through Strength
25. Avoid Entangling Alliances
26. Protecting the Role of the Family
27. Avoiding the Burden of Debt, and
28. The Founders’ Sense of Manifest Destiny.
Skousen’s one small book is very large on bringing each reader up to speed on what it means to be an American who not only understands the Republic, but who also knows what to do to defend and preserve it.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Martha Gies-Chumney is a retired educator. She spent 43 years of teaching at the secondary and college levels in the United States and in South Korea. She has traveled extensively and writes both fiction and nonfiction. Currently, she lives in the Los Padres National Forest at Pine Mountain Club, California, and her present focus is political activism at the local, state, and national level.
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