[Chad C. Mulligan]

BTW....USA-FRANCE is not entirely wrong. As the Constitution was being drafted, James Madison made a request to Thomas Jefferson for a large number of books on classical forms of government to be sent to him. Jefferson obliged and sent the books, from Paris....in France.

[higgmeister]

I'll grant you that Jefferson was very devoted to Voltaire who died in 1778.   I am sure Voltaire's works would have been in any library he sent to Madison along with all of the Ancient Classics.   When I visited Monticello in the late 1960s, the bust of Voltaire was on a pilaster in his combination Bedroom, Study and Solarium.

Voltaire, the great French philosopher and writer, died six years before Jefferson arrived in Paris. Jefferson admired his works and included them among a list of books of ancient and modern history, mathematics, astronomy, and religion recommended for the education of his nephew, Peter Carr, in 1787.

Jefferson's library included Voltaire's works published by Beaumarchais at Kehl, which he visited. A little more than a year after Jefferson arrived in Paris, he wrote, "I find the general fate of humanity here most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire's observation offers itself perpetually, that every man here must be either the hammer or the anvil."[2]

"Voltaire distrusted democracy, which he saw as propagating the idiocy of the masses."   In that, our Constitution was influenced by Voltaire more than the Constitution of France with their mob rule.