The Five Thousand Year Leap
The Five Thousand Year Leap: Twenty-Eight Great Ideas That Are Changing the World is a book that was published in 1981 by American
Criticism
 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (July 2014) |
redistribution of wealth, the separation of church and state, and the "In God We Trust" motto.[3] Wilentz describes The 5,000 Year Leap as "a treatise that assembles selective quotations and groundless assertions to claim that the US Constitution is rooted not in the Enlightenment but in the Bible and that the framers believed in minimal central government."[3]
Wilentz categorically disputes those assertions:
Either proposition would have astounded James Madison, often described as the guiding spirit behind the Constitution, who rejected state-established religions and, like Alexander Hamilton, proposed a central government so strong that it could veto state laws.[3]
Wilentz acknowledges that the Founding Fathers rejected what Samuel Adams denounced as "utopian schemes of leveling," but he notes that some of the Founding Fathers were quite pragmatic when it came to policy specifics.
See also
References
- ^ W. Cleon Skousen - The Man Behind Glenn Beck By Bill McKeever. Mormonism Research Ministry
- Salon Magazine, September 16, 2009.
- ^ a b c Confounding Fathers: The Tea Party’s Cold War Roots by historian Sean Wilentz, The New Yorker, October 18, 2010