After reading Rousseau, Locke, and Hobbes, I find the history of America even more interesting. So much of our constitution and founding principles are based off these 3 philosophers, which makes the parts that founding fathers choose to put into the Constitution and and the Declaration of Independence even more interesting to me.
From Rousseau's Discourse on the Inequality of Man, he talks about the social contract between the government and the governed. The governed must voluntarily give up some of his rights to the government to receive the benefits. They are not giving up their naturally liberty that he so strongly defends, but some things that are not natural, like property, wealth, etc. Liberty is something that to Rousseau that cannot Be given up. If it appears that it has been given up, then "violence had to be done" to "remove" the liberty from the person.
the founding fathers were so adamantly behind Rousseau's idea of natural liberty and a natural right to life, but at the same time had slaves and supported slavery. Rousseau explicitly states that slavery violates both of these natural rights of the slave and eve their offspring. It seems so clear to me through reading this discourse that slavery is wrong in all aspects, but yet we still had slaves for almost 100 years as a nation. What process did our founders go through to pick and choose what philosophies were best for our nation? Did they simply pick and choose what fit their agenda and made it seem like it was for the benefit of the nation? There is so much in Rousseau, Hobbes, and Locke alike that would be against many of the things our government today and when the nation first started, but yet, those ideas seemed to be ignored because they weren't beneficial to the nation? Wouldn't the life and liberty that we fought so hard to defend trump, any other motive?
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