The Left often sees Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a champion of equality and uses his criticisms of economic inequality and elite power. Take David Lay Williams, for example, a Rousseau scholar who recently claimed in the New York Times that Rousseau can give us special insight into Donald Trump. Supposedly, Rousseau can help us see why Trump thrives by stoking division—he pits Americans against each other in order to distract them from growing economic inequality. As Williams quotes Rousseau in the Second Discourse, “Chiefs foment everything that can weaken assembled men by disuniting them.”
But this kind of interpretation misses something crucial. Rousseau didn’t just warn about money and class in his writings: he was also worried about the breakdown of shared identity and culture—that is, citizenship. The Left loves to champion Rousseau when it’s convenient, but they ignore his warnings about what happens when people no longer see themselves as part of a shared community.
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