The Social Contract

1. (1762) A major work by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau states that governmental organization should be based on the general will of a society and should conform to the nature of human beings, and that the majority in a government has a right to banish resistant minorities.

Example Sentences

But the everyday reality of the White House’s war on immigrants can be seen most in the quiet hallways of buildings like 26 Fed: paperwork filled out under the watchful eye of a secret police force that is allowed to act with impunity, breaking the social contract of laws and procedure in personal, invasive ways that dehumanize everyone it comes in contact with.

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It’s acutely painful to read Bill Clinton’s long-winded paeans to the triumph of neoliberalism and the dawn of an era that will “reap the benefits of free markets without abandoning the social contract and its concern for the common good,” but that also required seizing “the opportunity to turn back the clock on greenhouse gas emissions so that we can leave a healthy planet to our children.”

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They are now desperately seeking to borrow or ventriloquize just enough of the far-right agenda to win elections without going all the way to blood-and-soil racism or entirely shredding the social contract.

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The great inspiration Thomas Jefferson drew from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s writings on the “social contract” before penning one of mankind’s most eloquent documents in July of 1776 was based on his belief that people would make rational, indeed democratic, decisions if they had the right information.

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Mr Fried said he took on the project for free because he felt the "social contract between tax payers and the British government has been a little bit broken".

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