trouble is most of the time that person

is the sheep between the wolves

Garden, great post however I think that the concept of democracy in this country is misunderstood to begin with.
The potentional for our form of democracy to continue to strive exists, however people have to go back to the constitution and learn about what rights they really have. This requires people to learn about the Federalist Papers, which unfortunetly is not taught in most school systems.
After fully understanding what our Forefathers designed then we can move on and develope our democracy and keep it alive.
The problem with most democracies of the past is that the common person was uneducated, not by choice, and when they did begin to gain "wealth" they did not know how to maintain themselves. We live in a democracy where anyone that wants to learn can. That is the key difference between past failures of the democratic rule and todays.