I finally read The 5000 Year Leap this week. It only took me 5000 years to get motivated. I was expecting a catechism of logically-flawed platitudes. Instead, I saw a warning about a lot of stuff that is just making the rounds in the national news circuit. In other words, what in my college days was a crock from a conspiracy theorist is now history.

I am in the process of erasing my penciled notes, since the book was borrowed. I had to come up for air, but here are but a few concepts gleaned:

  • Physical sciences build upon previous learning, but socio-political sciences seldom do.
  • Certain anti-social behaviors constitute moral decay and used to be considered insane.
  • Hard work, morality, and thrift are the only way to prosperity.
  • Public office with generous compensation will attract “scoundrels scrambling for a soft job.”
  • Without personal eternal vigilance, social orders decay toward chaos, and people in chaos have historically demanded a monarch.
  • The federal government can only make false promises for shortcuts to prosperity. Its welfare programs backfire.
  • “Under Ruler’s Law, problems are always solved by issuing more edicts or laws, setting up more bureaus, harassing the people with more regulators, and charging the people for these ‘services’ by continually adding to their burden of taxes.”
  • God is real, in harmony with the ultimate good, and there is such a thing as right and wrong, even though forms of worship vary.
  • The creature is responsible to its Creator.
  • Government should neither create nor recognize special classes; that includes protected classes.
  • Government should “protect equal rights, not provide equal things.”
  • The government that can take from somebody to give to you can take from you at will.
  • Compassion should not foster addiction, breed dependency and weakness, snuff the work ethic, or discourage excellence.
  • The more wealthy people, the better.
  • People need not make themselves victims to assimilate into a culture. They should find ways to become productive citizens. Acculturation takes time and effort.
  • People have responsibilities. Among these are a duty for “parents and elders to protect, teach, feed, clothe, and provide shelter for children,” a duty to help those who can’t help themselves, a duty to be economically self-sufficient, and a duty to avoid destructive vices.
  • Government handouts are demoralizing and debilitating.
  • Anybody who doesn’t believe forces are at work to destroy our American way of life deceives himself.
  • Reason and wisdom are good.
  • In the end, natural law trumps opinions.
  • Liberty is a Biblical virtue. People must be moral and virtuous to be trusted with self-government. According to Ben Franklin, “As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
  • Treason used to be a crime.
  • According to John Locke, “Whoever gets into the exercise of any part of the power by other ways than what the laws of the community have prescribed hath no right to be obeyed . . . since he is not the person the laws have appointed, and, consequently, not the person the people have consented to.” Whenever somebody in elective office usurps or borrows power, “they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands . . . and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and . . . provide for their own safety and security.”
  • People falsely assume strong, centralized command and control can establish equality of rewards for unequal effort.
  • “Following World War II, . . . all over the world, socialist nations – both democratic and communistic – were drifting into deep trouble. All of them were verging on economic collapse in spite of tens of billions of dollars provided by the United States to prop them up.”
  • Too much power should not be allowed to agglomerate in one place. Megalomaniacs gravitate toward power sinks.
  • In order prosper, people must be secure in their property, or else somebody could steal away whatever they acquire for a project.
  • Accruing debt to be paid by future generations is a form of taxation without representation.

If you want more, I highly recommend the book.