Christiaan Briggs wrote:
As John Mohawk has argued, in regard to America for example, American Indians are directly or indirectly responsible for the public-meeting tradition, free speech, democracy, and "all those things which got attached to the Bill of Rights." Without the Native example, "do you really believe that all those ideas would have found birth among people who had spent a millennium butchering other people because of intolerance of questions of religion?"
Um, some guy claiming this doesn't make it an undisputed fact. Europeans had a lot of misconceptions about Native American society, both positive and negative; some of these were not fully understood until the scientific development of anthropology in the 20th century. An educated white American of the 18th century was more familiar with the doings of the ancient Athenian boule than with the society living on the other side of the hill outside his door; Ben Franklin's admiration of the natives was considered just another one of his charming eccentricities.
Reflexive condemnation of Western civilization is no more rational than uncritical praise.
Stan