Oh and the USSR and PRC? Are you joking?
And to be perfectly clear, to both of you: I think that government itself is what "sucks" ... the form thereof is virtually irrelevant. Our much vaunted Constitution has proven utterly incapable of protecting itself, or limiting government. A monarchy or dictatorship is only as good or bad as the monarch or dictator. One could be very free (in the sense of being left alone to do one's thing) under a monarch who knows better than to go meddling in folks' lives. One can be very unfree under a supposedly democratic or republican government, when it (by popular demand) turns into the nanny-state. Or worse.