“I say this without fear of contradiction: if a democratic republic like the one in the United States were ever to be established in a country where autocratic rule had already introduced administrative centralization, and where both custom and law had absorbed its influence, that country would come to know a despotism more intolerable than any that has ever existed in Europe’s absolute monarchies. To discover anything comparable one would have to look to Asia.”

-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 1, Pt. II, Ch. 8, p. 302. c. 1835-1840. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer