Dimpled  or pregnant ballots, or aborted democracy? barf!...  consider
where "we" might have learned some of the ideas we still haven't
materialized...
 fs



American Indians: The original democrats

   Many people think that our democratic tradition
   evolved primarily from the Greeks and the English.
   But those political cultures, steeped in slavery,
   aristocracy, and property-power, provided only a
   counterpoint to the real source of our federal democracy
   - the American Indians. In the following selections
   from his book "Indian Givers: How the Indians of the
   Americas Transformed the World" (Crown Publishers,
   NY, 1988), Jack Weatherford looks into the historic
   record to correct the mythology we have been raised
   with. -- Tom Atlee

The most consistent theme in the descriptions penned about the New World

was amazement at the Indians' personal liberty, in particular their
freedom
from rulers and from social classes based on ownership of property. For
the
first time the French and the British became aware of the possibility of

living in social harmony and prosperity without the rule of a king.

As the first reports of this new place filtered into Europe, they
provoked
much philosophical and political writing. Sir Thomas More incorporated
into
his 1516 book Utopia those characteristics then being reported by the
first
travelers to America.... More's work was translated into all the major
European languages....

Louis Armand de Lom d'Arce, Baron de Lahontan, wrote several short books
on
the Huron Indians of Canada based on his stay with them from 1683 to
1694
[during which he] found an orderly society, but one lacking a formal
government that compelled such order.... Soon thereafter, Lahontan
became
an international celebrity feted in all the liberal circles. The
playwright
Delisle de la Drevetiere adapted these ideas to the stage in a play
about
an American Indian's visit to Paris... Arlequin Sauvage,.... which had a

major impact on a young man named Jean Jacques Rousseau.... and
eventually
led to the publication of his best-known work, Discourse on the Origins
of
Inequality, in 1754....

During this era the thinkers of Europe forged the ideas that became
known
as the European Enlightenment, and much of its light came from the torch
of
Indian liberty....

When the American Revolution started, [Thomas] Paine served as secretary
to
the commissioners sent to negotiate with the Iroquois.... [He] sought to

learn their language and throughout the remainder of his political and
writing career he used the Indians as models of how society might be
organized.

- pp. 122-125

Reportedly, the first person to propose a union of all the colonies and
to
propose a federal model for it was the Iroquois chief Canassatego,
speaking
at an Indian-British assembly in Pennsylvania in July 1744.... He
suggested
that they do as his people had done and form a union like the League of
the
Iroquois....

Benjamin Franklin...[was] Indian commissioner...during the 1750s and
became
intimately familiar with the intracacies of Indian political culture and
in
particular with the League of the Iroquois..... Speaking to the Albany
Congress in 1754, Franklin called on the delegates of the various
English
colonies to unite and emulate the Iroquois League.... This model of
several
sovereign units united into one government presented precisely the
solution
to the problem confronting the writers of the United Sates Constitution.

Today we call this a "federal" system in which each state retains power
over internal affiars and the national government regulates affairs
common
to all....

The Americans followed the Iroquois precedent[s] of always providing for

ways to remove leaders when necessary .....admitting new states as
members
rather than keeping them as colonies....allowing only one person to
speak
at a time in political meetings....

One of the most important political institutions borrowed from the
Indians
was the caucus....The word comes from the Algonquian languages..... The
caucus became a mainstay of American democracy both in the Congress and
in
political and community groups all over the country.

- pp. 135-145