The only man with no master is the dead man.
We'll have to agree to disagree there. I'm quite alive and far from alone. My only Master - well, you know Who that is.
Pulling back to history for a moment - the principal problem with autocracy is, as it has always been, one of succession. A representative government has many flaws, including placing some very flawed individuals in the role of decision-maker. What it does offer is orderly succession. (One might quibble at the notion that the circus we see before us constitutes "order" but it is, after all, far less disruptive than, say, the Wars of the Roses or the Thirty Years' War.) The country will survive a fool such as Obama placed into the chair that once held Harding and Carter because that fool must yield to the next without the citizens dying to effect it. And that is, after all, a form of order that autocracy, especially that of the Caesars, cannot offer.
Freedom is not an illusion, but it is a fragile thing and must be constantly and jealously defended. My point remains that the form of government is not irrelevant with respect to freedom, and that autocracy is inherently more oppressive than representative government. There too we must agree to disagree.
One other thing, though - the First Lie, "and ye shall be as gods" was not an expression of the relation of individual political freedom, or any other relation of man to man, it was an expression of the relation of man to God. That is the only autocracy acceptable to a free man. IMHO.
There's the flaw. Why must the "fool in the White House" yield to the next "fool"? Because some piece of parchment says so? The Romans had a piece of parchment too!
Our government is not immune to the forces that have shaped history. Some day we may get a president who refuses to yield the office (or accept a "tampered-with" election return. Alea iacta est...). The Congress and Supreme Court will have the law on their side, true, but the Commander In Chief will have the army on his. Who's going to throw him out? Now, the army swears an oath to the Constitution, not to the Commander in Chief, but no one has the power to hold them to that oath. In such a situation it will be up the the officers of the army (and the soldiers who follow them) to determine for themselves where their loyalties lie. Soldiers do not die for ideas, they die for men — men with charisma.
As citizens of a representative republic, we are no more safe from the possibility of an autocratic seizure of power than were the Romans of 44 BC. Ultimately, in every country, the Army decides who the Leader is.