Reply #116: then how were native american nations able to create a constitution - long before any Europeans?

[RainDog]

the great treaty of peace was a way to negotiate peace between different groups - to avoid warfare.

but those nations did not come out of an ideology that stated that land was property - their beliefs held that they were trustees for the land where they lived - but they did not own that land.

the ability to survive by having adequate resources available to a person or a group is the issue - not property rights per se. I'm not opposed to property rights - but they are not a primary right - they're a choice a society makes - and when property is treated as more important as a right than liberty, life or the pursuit of happiness - then that's a perversion of basic ideas of the right of all persons to the same respect under the law (as with slavery, for instance, or with the recent bail out of banks to the detriment of the American people.)