Democracy was tried in many different settings and scopes, over the course of many centuries, before gaining a real foothold. America was NOT a great experiment in a new approach to government - or if it was, that experiment was with a Constitutionally limited system.

It was implemented in ancient Greece as we're all taught. At the time of America's founding, there was already a democracy of sorts in place in the Netherlands. Along the way, many other institutions implemented it - for example, pirate ships were often democracies, with the captain chosen by popular acclamation.

Democracy scales and in fact works better in small groups than large groups...