Thanks, Ron. Here's another view: The Iroquois Confederation Constitution: An Analysis Donald S. Lutz University of Houston
The Iroquois Confederation was not an influence on the U.S. Constitution, but it is worthy of study as an independently developed political system with the oldest surviving constitution in North America. A systematic institutional analysis of the Great Binding Law, the orally transmitted constitution of the Confederation, reveals, among other things: tribal inequality despite their formal equality under a unanimity rule; a high level of responsiveness despite a nondemocratic, elitist method for selecting leaders; many ancillary institutions for achieving a traditional form of consensus rather than simple majority rule; two means of elevating men to the Confederation Council, each a paradoxical blend of the pre political and the post-traditional; the first use of a formal amendment process in constitutional history; and an underlying "code of imperialism" that, together with the second method of selecting Confederation Council members, transformed a defensive alliance into a potent actor in North American history. Overall, the Confederation institutionally approximated an Aristotelian "mixed regime" which, despite its creation under circumstances the Iroquois describe in Hobbesian terms, was quite libertarian. Ron: Wow. The Confederacy was more like U.S policy than I realized. The point of the previous post was to defend the accusation of "Primitive tribes such as the American Indians have no record of sweetness and cooperation with other tribes. They ambushed them, tortured them, dashed their children's brains out on rocks." I'm here to say there IS a record to the contrary of that assumptive statement. Platt, I do realize that Westerners have an idealized conception of the native peoples, but also there is the primitive immoral savage misconception also. both are equally Illusionary. Never trust an Academic remember? Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
