The Five Thousand Year Leap by W. Cleon Skousen

The Five Thousand year Leap

28 Great Ideas That Changed the World

W. Cleon Skousen

Published 1981

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The Five Thousand Year Leap is a compelling manual for all Americans to study, learn, and understand the ideas that make our nation unique and exceptional. It is the true account of our story, an essential examination of our history, and an analysis of the structure of our government. It is a thorough exploration on the origins of the distinctive American government, which gave birth to the writing of the U.S. Constitution. The Five Thousand Year Leap explores the twenty-eight founding principles that shaped the United States of America. 

As per the author's opening statement:

The American people are now two centuries away from the nation's original launching. Our ship of state is far out to sea and is being tossed about in stormy waters, which the Founders felt could have been avoided if we had stayed within sight of our initial moorings.

They also felt that each ingredient set forth in their great success formula was of the highest value. They would no doubt be alarmed to see how may of those ingredients have been abandoned, or have been allowed to become seriously eroded.  

America had a "hard beginning," as far as Jamestown was concerned; but it was a good lesson, and a lesson well-taken for the Founders who wrote the Constitution. It was the greatest comprehensive experiment in liberty and self-government ever taken in the history of nations.

But, as Skousen warns: "...when we don't teach the rising generation those cultural and moral lessons that keep society healthy and safe, the people end up making all the same mistakes..." 

Americans are in danger of losing their Republic. 

We have no reason to be in this position because these twenty-eight principles have been clearly laid out for us; except that if we fail to teach them to every generation, and practice them, then, yes, we will continue to make the same mistakes that man has fallen into over and over again, out of selfishness and slothfulness. 

These principles or great ideas took over 180 years to be assembled, as they had already existed in history, and were brought together through the Founders who studied the same concepts and arguments of the past.

There are two parts of the book, and both sections are direct and precise in their statements and supporting examples, which include countless quotes from history, documentation, letters, and speeches, many from the Founders.

Part I includes: The Founders' Monumental Task

This section covers political spectrum, political parties, and the importance of the People's Law. It follows the Founders knowledge of Anglo Saxon Common Law, which leads to the new order of self-government. Most power is in the hands of the people or individual, then power becomes diminished as you climb upward: family, municipal (city), provincial/state, and ends with the least amount of power in a national/federal head. (A similar structure can be found in Exodus 18:13-26.)

The Founders sought to create a balance of power between tyranny and anarchy. They kept power close to the individual (self-government); the states focused on internal affairs; and the federal covered issues not effectively handled by the state or individual. This was also aided by a balance of and check on powers within legislative, judicial, and executive branches.

They also warned against a welfare state (redistribution of wealth) and of the need for an educated electorate.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. ~Thomas Jefferson

Part II: The Founders' Basic Principles:

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 morally stable people is to elect virtuous and moral 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 protect equal rights, not provide equal things.
8. Men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 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 which has become tyrannical.
12. The United States of America 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 are secure only so long as the right to property is secure.
15. The highest level of prosperity occurs when there is a free-market economy and a 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 government, all others being retained in 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 men.
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 stay strong.
25. Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations - entangling alliances with none.
26. The core unit which 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. 

My copy includes bonus material: a copy of the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, the essay Common Sense by Thomas Paine, and 101 Constitutional Questions to Ask Candidates (or yourself!).

As Glenn Beck writes in the Forward: 

You, me, all of us were born for this day, to stand responsible before God and future generations to keep this torch of freedom lit, and bear it away from ruin. 

Remember those minutemen in the days of our Revolutionary War? Do you remember their job, to be ready to defend the encroachment of the Redcoats with a minute's notice? 

Well, that is where we stand today. 

The power is ours to blast our horns and shake those rotted scales off our freedoms, shake them to rubble and get our country back.  

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I would suggest this as an excellent resource for high schoolers, in addition to the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution.

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Walden

Henry David Thoreau 

Published 1854    

The Well-Educated Mind Reading Challenge [Biographies] 

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This book was one of the most anticipated books on the entire Well-Educated Mind reading list.  It was like preparing for a visit from a good, old friend.  I was a little apprehensive though that I may not love Walden as I originally did over twenty years ago, since so much of my worldview has changed; however, I can confirm that Walden and I are indeed still friends.

When I studied architecture in college, my professor had us read Walden and "Civil Disobedience." He was a libertarian-type, and I can understand why he encouraged us to study Thoreau's life and principles.  Thoreau was self-sufficient, self-reliant, independent, and a lover of liberty.  He was also a naturalist, surveyor, explorer, philosopher, poet, and author.  He practiced a life of simplicity.  

If you are curious, Walden is a short collection of experiences written by the author about his two-year experiment, living in the woods near Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts.  He divided his principles, opinions, and findings into sections: economy, reading, sounds, solitude, visitors, higher laws, brute neighbors, winter animals, the pond in winter, and spring, to name a few of my favorites.  His purpose for going to Walden Pond was this:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Here are a few of my favorite common sense truths about Thoreau, in my own words:

• He foresaw the booming industrial revolution as a threat to nature - which he understood to be an enhancement to one's life.
• He built his own home and grew his own food, and expressed rationally a need for every man to build his own home and grow his own food, instead of paying someone else to do it.  
• He was simple and plain, and had few material goods, and preferred to live that way. 
• He believed ornaments, decorations, and fashion for houses and people were foolishness.
• He thought man worked too hard, too long, and had nothing to show for it.
• He knew man lived well beyond his means.
• He felt charity, doing-good, and philanthropy were overrated and done out of selfishness.
• He loved reading great books.
• He was a realist.

Some of my favorite quotes:

On ECONOMY    Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?  We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.

The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem itself.

This spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet.

On WHERE I LIVED:  Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.   (Thoreau regarded the morning as the best time of day.  It is!)

On READING:  The adventurous student will always study the classics.  For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? 

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem.

A written word is the choicest of relics.  It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. 

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

On SOLITUDE:  I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.  To be in company, even with the best, is wearisome and dissipating.  I love to be alone.  I never found the companion that was so companionable than solitude.

When I was a college girl, except for the vegan diet (Thoreau’s preference), I wanted to live like Thoreau.  I wanted a simple life (and I still do!).  At one time, I was so inspired by Thoreau's ideas, I wanted to move to Alaska and live in an igloo; that is how much I took living simply to heart.  (By the way, I would have returned home to sunny California quicker than you could say "iceberg" because I am not that adventurous.  I don't even like camping in a tent in the local mountains.) 

MY CONCLUSION:    Honestly, I had two opposing voices.  The first was my adult-ish, motherly, Christian-worldview voice, with husband, five kids, and the burdens of this life that scolded Thoreau and wanted him to mature and be adult-ish, too.  "This is sheer idleness, Thoreau!  Real men work.  Come in from the woods and contribute to society.  How can you 'love thy neighbor' and ‘serve others’ while being separated from the world?  Stop wandering off, writing poetry, pondering nature, and doing the bare minimum to get by." That was my first voice.

My second voice was the younger girl of a simpler time, screaming, “TAKE ME WITH YOU!!!!”  That was the voice that was starring and underlining and writing all over again these important words of Thoreau's thoughts that are still alive in me.  (Yeah, things changed once I got married and had kids; peace and serenity are a long way off in this crowded little house of seven, Plus, I live in a desert.)  Nonetheless, I am still free to imagine and create my own Walden Pond right here in my own little world.  Like Thoreau said, "Live the life you imagined."       

In the words of Thoreau, “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!”