The 5,000-Year Leap - A Miracle that Changed the World

About The 5000 Year Leap

337 pages

Author: W. Cleon Skousen

Discover the 28 fundamental beliefs of the Founding Fathers which they said must be understood and perpetuated by every people who desired peace, prosperity, and freedom.

These beliefs have made possible more progress in 200 years than was made previously in over 5,000 years.

The following is a brief overview of the principles found in The Five Thousand Year Leap, and one chapter is devotes to each of these 28 principles.

Principle 1 - The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law.

Natural law is God's law. There are certain laws which govern the entire universe, and just as Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, there are laws which govern in the affairs of men which are "the laws of nature and of nature's God."

Principle 2 - A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." - Benjamin Franklin

Principle 3 - The most promising method of securing a virtuous people is to elect virtuous leaders.

"Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who ... will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man." - Samuel Adams

Principle 4 - Without religion the government of a free people cannot be maintained.

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.... And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion." - George Washington

Principle 5 - All things were created by God, therefore upon him all mankind are equally dependent, and to him they are equally responsible .

The American Founding Fathers considered the existence of the Creator as the most fundamental premise underlying all self-evident truth. They felt a person who boasted he or she was an atheist had just simply failed to apply his or her divine capacity for reason and observation.

Principle 6 - All mankind were created equal.

The Founders knew that in these three ways, all mankind are theoretically treated as:

1. Equal before God.

2. Equal before the law.

3. Equal in their rights.

Principle 7 - The proper role of government is to protect equal rights, not provide equal things.

The Founders recognized that the people cannot delegate to their government any power except that which they have the lawful right to exercise themselves.

Principle 8 - Mankind are endowed by God with certain unalienable rights.

"Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as are life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal [or state] laws to be inviolable. On the contrary, no human legislation has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner [of the right] shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture." - William Blackstone

Principle 9 - To protect human rights, God has revealed a code of divine law.

"The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the Holy Scriptures. These precepts, when revealed, are found by comparison to be really a part of the original law of nature, as they tend in all their consequences to man's felicity." - William Blackstone

Principle 10 - The God-given right to govern is vested in the sovereign authority of the whole people.

"The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent of the people. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legislative authority." - Alexander Hamilton