And the English, whom the cowpoke in the piece reviles only slightly less than the French and the Germans, invented the parliamentary constitutional monarchy over a period of centuries, from Magna Carta to the Glorious Revolution.

It was from these European developments that a bunch of upstart colonists got the idea that their town meetings and houses of burgesses, modelled after the English institutions their grandparents had brought across the Atlantic, could form the model for a national government. Based, of course, on contemporary French political theory. You have no doubt heard of Montesquieu and Rousseau. Benjamin Franklin also added some practical politics on the subject of federations that he learned from the Five Nations of the Iroquois, who didn't have firearms but were nonetheless a civilized people with large towns and established agriculture, not savages living in the bushes.

The "last man standing" theory of justice works reel good on "Gunsmoke", but in our real history, it reads more like modern gang wars. The idea that democracy and civilization are not compatible betrays a laughable lack of understanding about how civilization supports a stable economy, and how that stability encourages the social contract and cooperative government needed for representative or direct democracy to develop.

Our grizzled cowpoke spins an adorable pony tale. Too bad he wasn't paying attention in history class. I guess all those 18th century powered wigs and the queers in ancient Greece and the Christian-killers in Rome put him off.