What you're expressing a desire for is pluralism. Not necessarily democracy. Athens was a democracy, but I'm guessing you likely would not have approved of it

What you're expressing a desire for is pluralism. Not necessarily democracy. Athens was a democracy, but I'm guessing you likely would not have approved of it because it was anything but pluralistic. You're talking about an ideological ideal, where the grassroots is as heard as the clergy. A laudable goal, but democracy is a mechanism. You use democracy to get to that ideal. But you may need more than simple democracy. You may need a rule separating church from state to stop what happened in the Commonwealth. Completely non-democratic, because you're precluding people from voting for certain people, but it's protecting pluralism, and pluralist thoughts and ideas. Of course that rule does you no good if people just ignore said rules, but that's another discussion.