The 5000 Year Leap

For five millennia, humanity trudged along with only incremental gains in liberty and prosperity. Then, in 1787, something unprecedented happened: the birth of a nation governed not by rulers’ whims, but by principles rooted in natural law, virtue, and limited power. The 5000 Year Leap shows how the Founders’ success formula ignited an explosion of progress — compressing centuries of advancement into a single lifetime.

W. Cleon Skousen distills that formula into 28 proven principles. He documents how ideas such as unalienable rights, property as the guardian of liberty, free-market economics, and checks and balances were drawn from sources as diverse as Anglo-Saxon common law, ancient Israel, and Enlightenment thinkers like Locke and Montesquieu. He shows how these principles transformed a struggling collection of colonies into the most prosperous republic in history.

But Skousen also issues a warning. When Americans forget that rights come from the Creator, when they trade equal rights for equal things, or when they pile debt upon future generations, the results are predictable: loss of freedom and collapse of prosperity. His evidence comes not from theory but from the Founders themselves — letters, debates, and speeches that reveal their intent with striking clarity.

More than a history book, this is a guide for renewal. It places into the hands of readers the very tools the Founders used to craft a government of law, not of men. In a time when constitutional order seems fragile, The 5000 Year Leap calls for an enlightened electorate willing to rediscover the principles that made America a beacon to the world. (2008ed, 337pp, pb)