Rousseau was considered by many to be the most gifted and original of all the Enlightenment thinkers, but most would argue that his legacy was limited to Revolutionary France and France's anti-authoritarian culture. However, I argue that it was in fact Rousseau who had the greatest influence on American culture. Thomas Jefferson echoed John Locke when he wrote that "all men are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights," so it would be easy to argue that Locke's beliefs created our culture that values the rights of all. James Madison began the US Constitution with "We the people," a direct allusion to Rousseau's idea of the sovereign. Rousseau believed that the sovereignty of the state belonged to its citizens and that it was
