Yes, I choose to ignore systems of government that came into being before the rise of the nation-state when determining what is and is not a long lasting form of government. I think that makes sense. Needless to say Rome was not a democracy and Greece did not exist as anything resembling a nation-state, so neither is even slightly relevant. And neither collapsed because they became welfare states.
My point is that:
1. Tytler’s statement (which after quoting you’re now saying he didn’t make while calling me ignorant, so let’s just stick with his general belief that democracies fail because people are too self-interested) has been around for a really long time.
2. In the actual experience of people living over the last two centuries, democracies have been far more stable than any other form of government. More to the point, it’s become pretty clear that the other forms government that an eighteenth century philosopher/historian might have found acceptable (i.e. monarchy and oligarchy) in fact are far less stable precisely because those forms of governance almost invariably cannot disentangle governance from the self-interest of the governor.
3. So to summarize, we can learn from Tytler that without any evidence to back up the argument, it’s possible to conceptualize democracy as a doomed experiment. The evidence from recent history suggest that it’s not. Ergo, people should stop quoting, or misquoting if you’d like, Tytler as if his statement represents an argument anyone should still be having.
And what European democracy are you referring to that almost collapsed due to this concern? My only guesses are Weimar Germany and present day Hungary, but neither fits the bill.