discuss the abstract correlations between several different democracies

I was aiming for European parliamentary democracy, implicitly more on the non-Monarchical ones (Parliamentary Republics ) as educated people in practice believe they should work and how they do work (belief in belief about what is happening and how they should work is trickier).

This just isn't going to work if it's considered acceptable to make potshots at various countries and nationalities.

I agree. Pentagonese isn't a nationality (I hope). I think that's the only one I made (besides Scotsmen, but there aren't any true Scotesmen anyway).

EY once recommended that if politics needs to be discussed, one should stick with examples so historical that the participants are not invested in the rightness of the politics. Of course, with democracy this is almost futile, since nothing I would call liberal democracy was really in evidence prior to the modern era. The problem then becomes, how do we prevent people's System 1 from kicking in when discussing contemporary, relevant politics? I don't know.

Yes the historical gap is too vast. I was hoping that since I willl describe Parlimentary Democracy in Central European cultural context Americans will have an easier time thinking about it calmly than they would if I criticized their own particular system, even if I was attacking the same key points!

I however don't think criticism of democracy is that mind-killing for most, for the reasons CaveJohnson described. But maybe if this essay gets done particularly well the realization that democracy is actually and seriously being questioned might kill some minds. Maybe I should take advice on talking about politics more seriously than I did originally.

4) Ontology

I'll just link this here.

I tried to limit this by defining casual usage of the term to a very small set of seemingly decently run countries that share noticeable similarities in government stricture.