I must learn to ignore your posts, they serve no purpose at all.

This is my original post.

“If you’re really open minded you might consider the idea that though traditional tribal societies were collectives and socialist they still had a chief who called the shots. Try and balance that in your over heated mind”.

You’ve gone and revised my quote and then tried to make me defend that.

Here’s your post.

“Could you cite some enthongraphies which detail the extent to which chiefs in nomadic hunter-gatherer communities ignored consensus to dictate what would happen.”

I didn’t say the chief ignores consensus in the tribe.

Then in your first point you question the validity of Levi’s finding, as if that might make my point invalid.

Then when it suits you go and use Levi’s findings to support your points, #2and #3.

Finally your posts confirm what I’d already said, that the chief in his position of power only holds it by the benefits the tribe gains.

Which is largely my point about power that I made in the OP.

As to your hysterical rant about the right and left, and this being

another boring right-wing moan. You guys are always trying to dress up your basic unexamined conservatism in some higher sounding philosophical rhetoric - — Isaac

let me remind you that these power figures occur just as much, if not more, in leftist states.