“The Five Thousand Year Leap,” first published in 1981 by the late Cleon Skousen, provides an essential introduction to the Founding of our Nation. Mr. Skousen approaches the Founding as a miracle, not unlike the Moses’ parting of the Red Sea or Jesus’ healing. Indeed, he declares that Heaven was intimately involved in the unfurling of a system of government, that in its original state set the stage for the emancipation of human virtue.
The author adroitly condenses the Founders’ intentions into 27 principles. Examining each principle, he dives into a canon of American dogma. The weightier concepts include Natural Law, Public Virtue, religion, equality of rights, inalienable rights, divine law, sovereignty, republican democracy, property rights, free markets, checks and balances, public education, foreign alliances, national debt, and American Exceptionalism.
This is a great book for anyone hoping to find an introduction to the founding history of our nation and the role that Christianity played. It is a subject that has been prostituted by the political class for nearly 100 years. There was a time when Americans treated Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin with reverent awe. Today they are relegated to history’s trash heap, labeled as racists, sexists, and narcisists. Although it isn’t biographical in approach, this book restores the principles that motivated those Founding Fathers to build a nation that altered 5000 years of human history and launched it into the modern era.