“Were it made a question, whether no law, as among the savage Americans, or too much law, as among the civilized Europeans, submits man to the greatest evil, one who has seen both conditions of existence would pronounce it to be the last; and that the sheep are happier of themselves, than under care of the wolves.”
—Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XI, 1782. ME 2:129
And yet how far off the ground did each one get?
When we honestly reframe the pertinent riterion to be the glory of God, not just the self glory of an abstract freedom, we come to a different conclusion.
And anyhow we have the fallacy of the excluded middle. Europe may be too government centered for the glory of God, but mankind can vastly improve on how it found American Indians. Surely we may discard the bathwater without also discarding the baby.