The Five Thousand Year Leap

The Five Thousand Year Leap

Author	W. Cleon Skousen
Language	English
Genre	Christianity Mormonism Political Science American history
Publisher	National Center for Constitutional Studies
Publication date	June 1981
Publication place	United States
ISBN	978-0-88080-004-4

The Five Thousand Year Leap: Twenty-Eight Great Ideas That Are Changing the World is a book that was published in 1981 by an ex FBI agent and anti-communist as well as conservative Mormon author Cleon Skousen. The book asserts that the United States prospered because it was established upon universal natural law principles passed down from Common Law and traditional Judeo-Christian morality, as many of the Founding Fathers were guided by the Bible among others, and consequently that the U.S. Constitution incorporates enlightened ideas.

In Ronald Mann's introduction to the 10th-anniversary edition, he praises Skousen for grasping America's choice of "Christ or chaos" and for acknowledging that America's future depends on "accepting and demonstrating God's government."

Premise

The book lists how the Founding Fathers of the United States used 28 fundamental beliefs to create a society based on morality, faith, and ethics, which Skousen asserts resulted in more progress having been achieved in the last 200 years than in the previous 5,000 years of every other civilization combined. Those beliefs are:

1. The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is natural law.
2. A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong.
3. The most promising method of securing a virtuous and a morally stable people is to elect virtuous leaders.
4. Without religion the government of a free people cannot be maintained.
5. All things were created by God, therefore upon Him all mankind are equally dependent, and to Him they are equally responsible.
6. All men are created equal.
7. The proper role of government is to provide equal rights, not equal things.
8. Men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.
9. To protect man's rights, God has revealed certain principles of divine law.
10. The God-given right to govern is vested in the sovereign authority of the whole people.
11. The majority of the people may alter or abolish a government that has become tyrannical.
12. The United States shall be a republic.
13. A constitution should be structured to permanently protect the people from the human frailties of their rulers.
14. Life and liberty is secure so long as the right to property is secure.
15. The highest level of prosperity occurs when there is a free market economy and minimum of government regulations.
16. The government should be separated into three branches—legislative, executive and judicial.
17. A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power.
18. The unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the principles of government are set forth in a written constitution.
19. Only limited and carefully defined powers should be delegated to the government, all others being retained by the people.
20. Efficiency and dispatch require government to operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority.
21. Strong local self-government is the keystone to preserving human freedom.
22. A free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of man.
23. A free society cannot survive as a republic without a broad program of general education.
24. A free people will not survive unless they remain strong.
25. Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations—entangling alliances with none.
26. The core unit that determines the strength of any society is the family; therefore, the government should foster and protect its integrity.
27. The burden of debt is as destructive to freedom as subjugation by conquest.
28. The United States has a manifest destiny to be an example and a blessing to the entire human race.

Cultural influence

The 5,000 Year Leap is frequently cited by right-leaning political commentator Glenn Beck as being the most influential in the development of Beck's political views, so much so he wrote the foreword for the newer edition of Skousen's book in 2009. The book became No. 1 on the Amazon.com website.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization, The 5,000 Year Leap is "an illustrated recipe for turning the United States into 50 little theocracies, each dictating morality according to its own religious ethics." These ethics, according to the SPLC interpretation of Skousen's work, should be transmitted through "extensive Bible reading" in public schools.

Historical accuracy

Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz disputes the book's claims on taxes, the redistribution of wealth, the separation of church and state, and the "In God We Trust" motto. Wilentz describes The 5,000 Year Leap as "a treatise that assembles selective quotations and groundless assertions to claim that the U.S. Constitution is rooted not in the Enlightenment but in the Bible, and that the framers believed in minimal central government." Wilentz argues that these assertions are not true, claiming that:

Either proposition would have astounded James Madison, often described as the guiding spirit behind the Constitution, who rejected state-established religions and, like Alexander Hamilton, proposed a central government so strong that it could veto state laws.

Wilentz acknowledges that the Founding Fathers rejected what Samuel Adams denounced as "utopian schemes of leveling," but notes that the Founding Fathers were quite pragmatic when it came to policy specifics. Disputing Skousen's claim that the Founders opposed the redistribution of wealth, Wilentz writes that:

He does not mention the Founders’ endorsement of taxing the rich to support the general welfare. Thomas Jefferson, for example, wrote approvingly in 1811 of having federal taxes (then limited to tariffs) fall solely on the wealthy, which meant that “the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings."

Skousen claims that the Founders adopted "In God We Trust" as the national motto of the United States. Wilentz notes that "In reality, the motto that came out of the Constitutional Convention was 'E Pluribus Unum': out of many, one. 'In God We Trust' came much later". The phrase began to appear on U.S. currency in 1864. "In God We Trust" became the national motto in 1956. Perhaps the earliest known reference to "In God We Trust" did not appear until a quarter-century after the Constitution was ratified; "The Star-Spangled Banner", written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key (and later adopted as the U.S. national anthem), contains a variation of the phrase: "...And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust'."

However, the Bible is only one source of inspiration of the founders according to Skousen. Also used was the existing tradition of Anglo-Saxon Common Law as well as the Roman Republican Senator Cicero. Skousen claims the Bible had its most influence not on federal government structure but local governments and the people, to support his claim that a nation can only be free when its people are virtuous.

See also

• The Naked Communist

External links

• Excerpts from The Five Thousand Year Leap – The New Yorker