U.S. Constitution signed
After four months of debate in Philadelphia, 39 delegates signed the U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787. It was the first major attempt to put the Hobbes-Locke-Rousseau debate onto a single operating document: a separation of powers (Roman republic), representation (Locke), written enumeration of rights in the subsequent amendments (English common law), and a preamble beginning 'We the People' (Rousseau). It was ratified over the next three years. Its specific genius was that the mechanism was not anyone's single theory — it was a compromise designed to survive the theories disagreeing.
The Constitution has been amended 27 times in 237 years. It originally excluded most of the population from voting; it's been steadily retrofitted. Its longevity isn't proof the framers were right — it's proof the document was flexible enough to be edited without being discarded.
05 · Social Contract
In roughly two centuries, European philosophers worked out a new account of where authority came from. Hobbes said the sovereign's power was granted by a tacit contract individuals signed to escape the war of all against all. Locke said the contract was conditional and revocable, and that the governed retained the right to dissolve any government that broke its terms. Rousseau said legitimate authority was the general will of the people themselves, not any individual monarch. Each argument sharpened the previous one. By 1789 the conclusions had been put on parchment and fired out of muskets on two continents.
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