To paraphrase an ancient saying, the average person is fit only to be a slave; the real problem is that there's no man fit to be their master nowadays. This was true in the days of Narmer, of Sulla & Marius, of Washington & Jefferson (the Founding Fathers hardly had a good opinion of democracy BTW), and of our days.

The only difference 'liberal democracy' has made is that it gives the commons the illusion that whatever message is being downloaded into their brains is actually there by choice, and that they have any real say in the goings-on being directed by the people holding their leashes. If anything, the modern governments are vastly larger and more intrusive than any classical republic or monarchy - and yet the modern serf accepts surveillance to an extent unthinkable even by Louis XIV 'for his own good', he thinks, and thinks nothing of judges and policemen who explicitly refuse to do their jobs, when past peasants would have lynched them and threatened their successors with the same unless they shape up!