The 5000 Year Leap

I recently finished reading "The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle That Changed the World" by W. Cleon Skousen. It's an educational book about America's founding fathers and the principles they applied to write the Constitution and form our government.

I learned so much from this book but what struck me the most was how far our current government has strayed from the founding father's original plans. It is actually scary!

For instance, it was considered essential that the government not go into debt. If forced into debt, it was to pay off the debt as quickly as possible. With the budget Pres. Obama has submitted for 2010-2019 the national debt would stand at an annual deficit of $7.3 to $9.1 trillion. This is an amount I fear we will never be able to repay.

Other principles include that written laws should not be so voluminous or incoherent that they can not be easily read and understood. Tax code anyone? (I had to take tax courses in college and they made me insane!)

Another principle is that a free people in a civilized society always tend towards prosperity. Only as the federal government has usurped authority and intermeddled with the free-market economy has this surge of prosperity been inhibited. That is a truly scary thought in today's economic climate especially as we watch the federal government institute bail-outs.

One other principle our founding fathers believed is that the government of a free people cannot be maintained without religion. They even thought it was essential that religion be taught in schools. There were five points that were to be taught in schools:

1)There exists a Creator who made all things, and mankind should recognize and worship him.

2) The Creator has revealed a moral code of behavior for happy living which distinguishes right from wrong.

3) The Creator holds mankind responsible for the way they treat each other.

4) All mankind live beyond this life.

5) In the next life mankind are judged for their conduct in this one.

The whole Constitutional framework was built on these five points. (For example, the sanctity of civil rights and property rights.)

These are just a few of the principles that our founding fathers intended. How have we gotten so far off track? Is it better today? Have the changes that have been made been for the best? I don't believe so. I would love to go back to a strict interpretation of the Constitution and a limited Federal government.