> Well I hate to disparage a large group of people, but how often have you spoken to an American who understands this type of social-legal history of the country, and values it?

Quite often, and the answer is not many. It's why I've returned to a frankly elitist worldview, because this seems to be a historical pattern when power is diffused too widely. The lesson of our age may be that the Chinese political system, which seeks to restrit political competition within a small, carefully-selected group, is fitter than the American experiment.