What would Rousseau think of the government of the USA?
Rousseau was a political moderate with enlightenment ideals. His politics would certainly fall in line with what the United States theoretically represents. However, this country was founded on slavery, genocide, and land theft and has spent centuries enslaving people through plantation slavery and prison slavery. The United States incarcerates more people per population than any other country in the entire world. The United States has only not been in a war of aggression for 12 years of its entire existence as a country. The U.S. is a global power because of economic and military imperialism and exploitation of poor folks living in the U.S. and around the world. The question for me in regards to Rousseau is as follows: would Rousseau be willing to actually critically analyze how the United States actually operates? On paper, the United States appears to be a country in which human rights are respected. How the United States operates, however, stands in stark contrast to this. If Rousseau were only to look at the wording of the Constitution and other foundational documents of the U.S. political system, he would likely be in support of the "social contract" of the U.S. government. Rousseau would perhaps have critiques of the representative democratic structure versus a direct democracy structure. However, if Rousseau were to truly analyze the actions of the United States, one would hope that he would see the United States as an imperialist, militaristic, and exploitative state.