W. Cleon Skousen was the founder of the National Center for Constitutional Studies, a university professor and the author of 23 books, including six college texts.  His book, THE 5000 YEAR LEAP, should be required reading for every high school student in America.

Our Founders argued for the necessity of an educated electorate because they knew that “democracy” would become “mobocracy” without an educated people.  In particular, they argued for the inculcation of the principles of morality and the principles of our United States Constitution.  They were fearful that future generations would forget or reject these principles, and they believed that the United States would survive only with the understanding of and faithfulness to these principles.

The book’s subtitle is The 28 Great Ideas That Changed the World.  If I had my way, we would give a copy of this book to every American.

Here are those “28 Great Ideas” which became the basis for our Constitution and for our nation.

28 Great Ideas That Changed the World

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 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 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 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 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 to the entire human race.

As our nation hurls at breakneck speed toward socialism disguised as democracy, we must do everything in our power to fulfill the words of Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address:  “that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

We need a “ new birth of freedom,” or, as I called it recently, a “Second American Revolution.”  To that end, we must reeducate the American people about our Founders’ dreams and values as well as their fears of and restrictions on a federal government.  

I am praying that the people of the United States will realized that we are mortgaging our children’s and grandchildren’s future by our reckless spending and socialistic substitute for public benevolence and by our disdain for constitutional government.

Pastor Alan Day