I think what you are saying is very likely. It seems to be the case that democracy has always been a philosophical object of interest, but as an idea, the outlay of democracy has always coincided with active revolutionary movements with financing and clear intent behind them. In the section of mine that you've quoted, I'd claim I'm being charitable to the idea of democracy *as given*, or *as though* it were an authentic reality. So, in effect, it's a priori reasoning about the idea of democracy, where the a posteriori reasoning about democracy probably reveals that such a thing has not developed organically in any meaningful way at any time in history. The notion itself that monarchical governments and existing power structures gave themselves over, or were forced (in a word) to relinquish to democracy appears to be a part of the justifying narrative of democracy itself. Democracy, like pure libertarianism, is the stuff of philosophy. On a related note, I did a post recently pertaining to the fact that slavery never ended, but has simply grown in the sophistication of its methods with time. I think this coincides tightly with the popularization of democratic ideals. A slave class which believes in democracy ceases to see the world in terms of slavery, save for the most brutish kind, lubricating their slide into more subtle sorts.