Well, we don't have anything that can really be described as democracy, rule by the people. We have elective oligarchies and dictatorships of various sorts. But rule by anyone is capable of producing some variety of tyranny, you don't avoid that simply by having a different system of goverment, it needs constant vigilance.

WE live in dangerous times, but as always the biggest danger lies with the people who control the most power and have the most capacity to destroy us. That is not the terrorist fringe. On a global scale they are a nuisance. At no time and in no nation have the numbers of people killed by that kind of thing approached the numbers killed in such ways as road accidents, let alone, for example, lung cancer. That includes 911.