“enlightenment ideas”, like democracy and such. This framing is very cynical, since the european upper class probably got those concepts from the native Americans which the US displaced/genocided.
What an absolutely bizarre idea.
It’s not that outlandish if a bit hyperbolic.
https://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/hconres331.pdf
The point is about the concepts of the European Enlightenment being derived from Native Americans (which is absurd), not that the Founding Fathers specifically understood and owe some debt to Native American forms of governance (which is controversial but mainstream and backed by evidence).
Are you suggesting that the native american tribes couldn’t have had democratic societies? Why no[t?
I guess, you have some reading to do](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_democracy#Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas)
I also suggest David Graeber’s and David Wengrow’s “The dawn of everything”, if you’re interested in the likely roots of US democracy.
Are you suggesting that the native american tribes couldn’t have had democratic societies?
No, I’m suggesting that the idea that the European Enlightenment era ideals of democracy were stolen from Native Americans because Europeans were too dumb to look at their own contemporary democratic societies and European history is fucking absurd.
This framing is very cynical, since the european upper class probably got those concepts from the native Americans which the US displaced/genocided.
Which contemporary democratic european societies do you mean, exactly? Which ones existed before the enlightenment?
Seriously, read the first few chapters of the dawn of everything. It’s worth it.
