The Dictatorship
Let us give thanks for democracy as well this Thanksgiving
In 1744, leaders of the Iroquois Confederacy met with representatives of several British colonies to negotiate a treaty. One of the Native Americans, an Onondaga diplomat named Canassatego, pointed out that the colonies could learn from their alliance, which dated back hundreds of years.
“Our wise Forefathers established Union and Amity between the Five Nations; this has made us formidable, this has given us great weight and Authority with our Neighboring Nations,” he said. “We are a powerful confederacy, and, by your observing the same Methods our wise Forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh Strength and Power.”
The speech was included in a collection printed by Benjamin Franklin, who later mused in a 1751 letter to a friend that it would be “a very strange Thing” if the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, also known as the Haudenosaunee, were able to form a union and not “ten or a Dozen English Colonies.”
These are some of the facts cited by supporters of the Iroquois influence theory, which holds that the Native American alliance was an inspiration for the U.S. Constitution. Its adherents further point to similarities in everything from federalism and the impeachment process to the use of the bald eagle and a bundle of arrows as symbols.
Within the field of history, this theory is a subject of some dispute. Historians have picked apart various pieces of evidence and claims about the specific influences that the Iroquois may have had on the delegates to the constitutional convention. And to be fair, some of the scholarship put forward for the Iroquois influence over the years has been overstated or thinly sourcedthough no one would argue that the framers were not aware of the Iroquois example.
The Europeans who came to North America were from countries that had largely run into an authoritarian dead end.
As Kirke Kickingbird, co-author of “Indians and the United States Constitution,” once saidimagining that the framers weren’t influenced by Native Americans would be like saying the Germans and the French didn’t know each other. That influence is worth contemplating on Thanksgiving, a day that acknowledges the debt that all Americans owe to the people who were here first.
The Europeans who came to North America were from countries that had largely run into an authoritarian dead end, overseen by rulers with absolute powers to dictate how their subjects lived and died. Here, the European settlers discovered a vast array of alternatives, including hereditary rulers, ones chosen only after careful debate, leaders who governed by consensus as well as those whose powers were limited to the hunting season or by a tribal council.
Even those Europeans who wanted to defend their system had to grapple with the existence of these alternatives in America in philosophical treatises that in turn influenced American democracy.
Many responded by inaccurately casting Native Americans as living in a sort of anarchy, a “state of nature” that, they implied or outright declared, European society had outgrown. English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, whose “Leviathan” defends the absolute powers of a king, described the lives of such unfortunates as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” as they lacked the supposed comforts of an all-powerful ruler.
But reformers, too, were preoccupied with America. As he outlined his objections to the divine right of kings in his “Two Treatises of Government,” the English philosopher John Locke described life before the invention of private property by comparing it to the New World. “In the beginning,” he wrote, “all the world was America.” Other Enlightenment thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Montesquieu also wrote about the state of nature in ways that made it clear they were thinking about America, too.
There are plenty of differences, of course, between the Iroquois Confederacy and the U.S. Constitution. The framers of Constitution were also influenced by European sources as varied as ancient Greece, the Roman Republic, the Hanseatic League and Swiss cantons. And the Enlightenment was driven by the spread of coffeehouses and libraries and the rise of a middle-class merchant class, among other things. But to acknowledge all these influences does not mean rejecting the notion that Native Americans were also in the mix.
The encounter between Europeans and Native Americans that began in the 15th century changed both forever profoundly, in ways both good and bad. The introduction of the horse allowed the Plains Indians to flourish, while diseases like smallpox wiped out entire tribes. Europeans picked up new staple crops like potatoes and tomatoes as well as an addiction to tobacco. Sequoyah was inspired to create the Cherokee written language, while European military strategists were influenced by Native American battlefield tactics.
It’s clear that this also included an exchange of ideas on how people should be governed and the proper limits of power that we are still grappling with today. So as we give thanks for the turkey and the corn this Thanksgiving, let us also take a moment to appreciate the gift of these ideas as well.
Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for BLN. He has previously worked for such outlets as Time magazine, Bloomberg News and CQ Roll Call. He teaches journalism at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies.
The U.S. military on Wednesday carried out new strikes in Iran, shooting down four attack drones and targeting a ground control station. The military stated both the drones and ground facility posed a threat to the Strait of Hormuz, a U.S. official said in a statement to MS NOW.
The official said the ceasefire agreement remains in effect and described the U.S. military actions as intended to maintain the ceasefire.
“Today, U.S. Central Command forces shot down four Iranian one-way attack drones that posed a threat around the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. forces also struck an Iranian ground control station in Bandar Abbas that was about to launch a fifth drone. These actions were measured, purely defensive, and intended to maintain the ceasefire,” the official said in the statement.
At least three explosions were heard east of Bandar Abbas, a port city in Iran along the Strait of Hormuz, The New York Times and CNN reported, both citing Iranian state media. The explosions briefly activated Bandar Abbas’ air defense systems, Fars News Agency, a media outlet affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reported early Thursday local time.
The latest strikes come amid an unstable ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran.
Speaking at a Cabinet meeting at the White House earlier Wednesday, President Donald Trump said Iran wants “very much to make a deal” but “they haven’t gotten there,” adding that Iran was “negotiating on fumes.”
“We’re not satisfied with it, but we will be,” Trump said. “Either that or we’ll have to just finish the job. Their navy is gone … their air force is gone, everything’s gone. And they’re negotiating on fumes. But we’ll see what happens. Maybe we have to go back and finish it, maybe we don’t.”
On MondayU.S. Central Command said in a statement that the U.S. carried out “self-defense” strikes on missile launch sites and boats in southern Iran in order “to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces.” That same day, Trump said in a Truth Social post that negotiations with Iran were “proceeding nicely!”
Julia Jester covers politics for MS NOW and is based in Washington, D.C.
Carla Herreria is an editor for MS NOW’s breaking news and liveblog team. She was previously a senior assignment editor at HuffPost.
President Donald Trump’s racist policy of welcoming white South Africans while excluding refugees from other countries is back in the spotlight after his administration raised its refugee ceiling — to bring in more white people.
Trump increased the refugee admissions ceiling by 10,000 for this year to allow more white South Africans to come into the country, a signed presidential determination reviewed by Reuters showed.
The document, dated May 21, said white South Africans of Afrikaner ethnicity face an emergency situation due to the “incitement of racially motivated violence” by the government and political parties in the majority-Black country.
The document, found herecites an “unforeseen emergency refugee situation” that doesn’t actually exist. Trump and his allies have pushed false claims that a “white genocide” is occurring, but South Africa’s government — and even advocacy groups representing the country’s white Afrikaner minority — have rejected the claim.
Reuters reported that the increased refugee limit is now 17,500 — and that only three non-South African refugees have been admitted into the U.S. this fiscal year. Reuters previously reported that the administration wanted to bring in 4,500 white South Africans immigrants per montha number that I noted mirrors the number of white German refugees the Ku Klux Klan wanted to welcome to the United States a century ago — when its members were popularizing xenophobic slogans like “America First” and launching campaigns of racist terror against people of color.
It’s noteworthy here that white supremacists have latched on to racist conspiracy theories, such as the “replacement theory,” saying that there is some kind of plot to replace white Americans with nonwhite people, particularly foreigners. In reality, what’s actually underway is the exact opposite: a government effort to deport nonwhite people in America — including people who have lived in the U.S. for years — while Trump’s regime takes steps to import white people, and as some conservatives fret over white birth rates.
It’s hard to imagine the klan itself wouldn’t approve of this policy.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
Amid the Republican Party’s ongoing assault on Black peopleDemocrats are borrowing a tactic from 20th-century civil rights activists and putting corporate America on notice.
On Tuesday, the Congressional Black Caucus said it sent a letter to more than 200 companies and business organizations, urging them to oppose the GOP’s push to eliminate majority-Black districts after the Supreme Court’s Callais v. Louisiana decision, which effectively permitted racist gerrymandering.
In 2021, the companies sent a letter to Congress in support of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, saying the legislation was needed to guard against racial discrimination and voter suppression. Signees on that letter included AppleDell and Googlewhose executives have since aligned themselves with President Donald Trump’s regime.
“Many corporations spoke clearly during that moment about the importance of protecting democratic participation, defending civil rights, and advancing racial equity,” the CBC’s letter reads. “Today, those commitments are being tested.”
The letter presses the companies to issue statements condemning the GOP’s push to dilute Black voters’ power, as well as information on corporate political spending. The pressure campaign follows the CBC’s public call for student-athletes to boycott public universities in states where Republicans have taken action against majority-Black voting districts.
Meanwhile, 16 Democratic state attorneys general sent a letter last week to three donor-advised funds urging them to lift restrictions on donations to the Southern Poverty Law Centeran anti-racist organization known for helping law enforcement officials take down white supremacist extremist groups. The charity-based arms of Fidelity and Vanguard, as well as a company called Donor Advised Charitable Giving, imposed the restrictions after the Trump administration’s baseless indictment of the SPLC. I recently wrote about how Trump allies have used these charges to downplay and outright deny the existence of racist extremismas well as spread lies about liberals being responsible for groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
This scrutiny of corporate America and its acquiescence to the MAGA movement has me thinking of a conversation I had with the Rev. Al Sharpton and the “Morning Joe” crew last week. During our chat, Sharpton warned that companies that align themselves with Trump’s war on diversity do so at their own risk, because Democrats could take steps in the future to hold these companies to account.
These letters show a strong interest among Democrats in pressuring companies that appear to be propping up, or placating, the rise of what many people see as Jim Crow 2.0.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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