Jean Jacques Rousseau, Hobbes And American Democracy

Author: Sean Dwyer

Freedom, Democracy, and Liberty are essential rights to the self-determination that all people inherently have. But, when those rights are trampled upon by individuals that seek to enslave and perpetrate countless crimes against the sovereignty of a man’s spirit, then freedom needs to be defended. Men are determined to rule themselves, free from the oppressive fists of a tyrant. It is during this grave hour where we are called upon to protect freedom. The baton of freedom has been passed to us, a new generation. Free from an era where our parents and grandparents pointed weapons that could annihilate the world at moment’s notice. Now in our time, freedom is calling on us, beckoning us to protect, secure, and nurture it so that all liberty loving people can reap the rewards of self-determination.

Idea’s our bigger than guns, than tanks, than any weapon that man will ever create. Ideas will always carry on. Man will always hunger for the right to be free. Therein lies the strength of free peoples or any people. Your weapon is an idea. The idea that all men should be free. That they should have the right to choose their own system of government. That power should not vest in the government that power should vest in the people. That no government is greater than the people. That government must adhere to the will of the people. Anything that the tyrants do to free people of the world, ideas will carry on. Governments should have to justify their actions to the people; people should never justify their actions to the government. (Thomas Paine, 2010). English philosopher Tomas Hobbes in his book the Leviathan described an ideal situation in which the government should coexist with the people. (The Columbia Encyclopedia, 2013). Hobbes described that a social contract or agreement existed where men abandoned a “state of nature” to form modern societies. (The Columbia Encyclopedia, 2013). French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau further expanded on Hobbes’s social contract theory by stating that, “That the general will establishes a reciprocal duty of rights, privileges, and responsibilities as the basis of the state.”(The Columbia Encyclopedia, 2013).

It is only under American democracy have these ideas peculated in to the fabric of modern life. Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.