Is the American System of Governmenet an "experiment"?

I used that phrase in a post today on Facebook. Someone then asked "what is our American Experiment in Self Government?"

I picked up the phrase "American experiment in self-government" many years ago in reading about our government in contrast to societies like the Greeks who set up some of the first city-states run under democratic principles only to see them fall into various forms of despotism as the citizens grew lazy or worse. In the historical sense, we Americans have been doing an "experiment" because all other attempts to run a government that is responsive to the "common man" have been failures. (The “elites” and “Progressives” sneer at the ideals of our Declaration and Constitution, condemning it as wildly optimistic to imagine that common people can – or even should – be able to make decisions about their own and their countrymen’s lives without being "professionals”). Many of our citizens see it the same way.

It remains to be seen whether our political system (and our liberties) will survive the onslaught of welfare bums, socialists, communists and opportunists. I hope the full-speed-ahead run toward totalitarianism can be reversed at the polls or through peaceful political action, but the American experiment is quivering on the knife's edge of failure right now.

I believe the statements in the Declaration of Independence about inalienable rights, and their Author. I know who wins in the end. I just hate to see the carnage that is coming in the name of "compassion" under Obamacare. The ruin of our country will be colossal and world-damaging. But maybe it will take that to wake us up, and to begin the long climb out of the pit of ruin to which we are headed.