Chesterton and Belloc made the comment a century ago that in the end most people don't care about political freedom, they worry about economic security. A lot of truth in that. Even the Founding Fathers knew that, and limited the franchise to certain people who they viewed as being able to think more about the good of the whole then their own interests.
In the end, republics become democracies and end up tyrannies. We are much closer to that than anyone wants to thing about.