how did Jean Jacques Russo contribute to the government?

Question

this is for 9th grade us government

Answer 1

Well lets put it context...

“In the same number of years it had taken America to travel the road from the Declaration of Independence to the signing of the Constitution, the French went from beheading their king to the coronation of their new emperor. The mindless slaughter that filled the gap was the translation of French political philosophy into practice.”

“Montesquieu derived his advocacy of the separation of power from the British model. Voltaire unequivocally admired John Locke and Isaac Newton, attributing British successes to the freedom of political discussion and to the use of reason to evaluate empirical evidence. Bit it was Rosseau’s Social Contract and hi judgement of man as “corrupted and rotten to the core by society and its institutions” that came to dominate French prescriptions for the future.”

“Rosseau’s fatal mistake was the proposition that man was in need of, and capable of, perfecting, which was exacerbated by his emotive dismissal of institutions.”

“And that is why the French Revolution of 1789 failed to accomplish a positive goal: it did not have one. It merely sought to demolish the existing. …..Unsurprisingly, a cacophony of ideas, agendas, events, and power brokers erupted. Consequently, it became a matter of transitory opinion whose head ought to be chopped off by the guillotine, and control of the executioner elevated the controller to being the “next hope of the people.” Danton countenanced the massacres until he was beheaded on orders of Robespierre, and Robespierre was himself beheaded a few months later. In the absence of workable institutions, it was only a matter of time before a supreme ruler would have to restore order and govern France once again. Bonaparte crowned himself emperor in 1804.”

(The influence of the French Revolution on American Government is overstated)

First there is the matter of chronology. The French Revolution began, with the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. By that time, George Washington had already been sworn in as our first president. The Constitution of the United States had been in effect for more than a year. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay had completed the essays known as the Federalist Papers before Egality! Fraternity! Liberty! were first proclaimed in Paris.

But the more important reason (the American revolution and government bear little resemblance to France) has to do with intent and perhaps, temperament. In France, the old regime had to be discarded….The unavoidable consequence was a power struggle among groups, each proposing ideas, opposed to principles and corresponding means for a framework of government. (American revolutionaries ) proclaimed their quarrel with the “present King of England”, not with the existing system of laws. Indeed, the King stood accused of abandoning “the free system of English laws”….The measured sobriety of the Declaration ( of Independence) , even at a moment of the most intense emotions, is in stark contrast to the recurring outburst, the slogan oriented demagoguery that characterized events in France.

The reason for this difference ….is their (British/American) early recognition of the unquestionable link that binds the concepts of law, property, and freedom. And so for the French, liberty was something to proclaim from the rooftops, for the British, it was a state to be achieved as the result of understanding human nature, of adopting solid principles, of crating a lasting system of laws and institutions.

So Russeau has little to do with the founding of our government. But his powerful words still fuel socialist dreams, but only if they ignore the "spectacle of mass executions ...clergy, royalist, aristocrats. Marx was the first to recognize its unlimited potential. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot showed the world how it could be done on a truly massive scale.