Acuera Honor Society

What inspired the thoughts of freedom and liberty, living without a king? Did this novel idea spring from European minds, or was it stimulated by observing Indian communities and their 'masterlessness'?

Is it mere coincidence that both the French revolution and the American revolution occurred well after spanish, english, french, dutch and other European colonialists visited a world so 'new' to them?

"That, on the principle of a communion of property, small societies may exist in habits of virtue, order, industry, and peace, and consequently in a state of as much happiness as Heaven has been pleased to deal out to imperfect humanity, I can readily conceive, and indeed, have seen its proofs in various small societies which have been constituted on that principle. But I do not feel authorized to conclude from these that an extended society, like that of the United States or of an individual State, could be governed happily on the same principle." --Thomas Jefferson to Cornelius Camden Blatchly, 1822. ME 15:399

'I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, & restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere' - Thomas Jefferson