"Well," and her voice goes a touch rueful and sardonic, "the country I live in also gained its independence from an overbearing and tyrannical government, so goes the story, and it set itself up as a representative democracy about two hundred some years ago. And mostly it's managed to keep from being too tyrannical over most of its own citizens, ever since then. People who weren't citizens, though, or people who some other people thought shouldn't count as citizens, that's been a different story. A lot of good and valuable ideas in its founding; mixed results on living up to them."