Bland rhetoric? You are just accusing me of redefining a word beyond usefulness for refusing to compromise standards for the sake of historic revisionism. How is "I don't know" even a response to what you wrote? You didn't ask a question...

I asked you what a functioning democracy was.

You said it's any democracy at all. And then you dropped a bunch of irrelevant drivel about patriotism because it furthered the pedantic argument you had with rayiner.

You never answered the question. Indeed, you refused to answer it.