[Rick Lee]

How much empirical evidence is there really on democracies lasting around 200 years? How many democracies were there before the U.S.? England was a constitutional monarchy with a parliament. But I don't think I'd call it close to a democracy. What was before that? Ancient Athens? While I agree, it looks like our voters want and more and more from the public trough and that is very bad news for us, I don't know how it fits into some model of democracies lasting 200 yrs. and being an impossible form of government for the long term.