This is a continuation of the 28 Great Ideas that are Changing the World from The Thousand Year Leap by Dr. Cleon Skousen. The first 14 ideas were featured in last week’s column.

Principle 15 – The highest level of prosperity occurs when there is a free-market economy and a minimum of government regulations.

Prosperity depends upon a climate of wholesome stimulation with four basic freedoms in operation: 1. The Freedom to try. 2. The Freedom to buy. 3. The Freedom to sell. 4. The Freedom to fail.

Principle 16 – The government should be separated into three branches .

“I call you to witness that I was the first member of the Congress who ventured to come out in public, as I did in January 1776, in my Thoughts on Government … in favor of a government with three branches and an independent judiciary. This pamphlet, you know, was very unpopular. No man appeared in public to support it but yourself.” – John Adams

Principle 17 – A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power by the different branches of government.

“It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.” – James Madison

Principle 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.

The structure of the American system is set forth in the Constitution of the United States and the only weaknesses which have appeared are those which were allowed to creep in despite the Constitution.

Principle 19 – Only limited and carefully defined powers should be delegated to government, all others being retained by the people.

The Tenth Amendment is the most widely violated provision of the bill of rights. If it had been respected and enforced America would be an amazingly different country than it is today. This amendment provides:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Principle 20 – Efficiency and dispatch require that the government operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority.

“Every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation to every one of that society to submit to the determination of the majority, and to be concluded [bound] by it.” – John Locke

Principle 21 – Strong local self-government is the keystone to preserving human freedom.

“The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent [to perform best]. – Thomas Jefferson Principle 22 – A free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of men.

“The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence of others, which cannot be where there is no law.” – John Locke

Principle 23 – A free society cannot survive as a republic without a broad program of general education.

“They made an early provision by law that every town consisting of so many families should be always furnished with a grammar school. They made it a crime for such a town to be destitute of a grammar schoolmaster for a few months, and subjected it to a heavy penalty. So that the education of all ranks of people was made the care and expense of the public, in a manner that I believe has been unknown to any other people, ancient or modern. The consequences of these establishments we see and feel every day [written in 1765]. A native of America who cannot read and write is as rare … as a comet or an earthquake.” John Adams

Principle 24 – A free people will not survive unless they stay strong.

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” – George Washington

Principle 25 – “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations —  entangling alliances with none.”- Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address.

Principle 26 – The core unit which determines the strength of any society is the family; therefore the government should foster and protect its integrity.

“There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is more respected than in America, or where conjugal happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated.” Alexis de Tocqueville

Principle 27 – The burden of debt is as destructive to human freedom as subjugation by conquest.

“We are bound to defray expenses [of the war] within our own time, and are unauthorized to burden posterity with them…. We shall all consider ourselves morally bound to pay them ourselves and consequently within the life [expectancy] of the majority.” – Thomas Jefferson

Principle 28 – The United States has a manifest destiny to eventually become a glorious example of God’s law under a restored Constitution that will inspire the entire human race.

The Founders sensed from the very beginning that they were on a divine mission. Their great disappointment was that it didn’t all come to pass in their day, but they knew that someday it would. John Adams wrote:

“I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant, and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”

This book documents how the Founding Fathers used 28 fundamental beliefs to create a society based on morality, faith, and ethics which has resulted in more human progress “in the last 200 years than in the previous 5,000 years of every other civilization combined.”