Democracy isn't all that it's cracked up to be. The USA didn't start calling itself a democracy until the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, the president who got us into World War I and the League of Nations (and instituted Jim Crow in Washington DC). Before that it was a republic. Technically, it still is a republic and not a democracy, which is where the citizen votes for laws instead of a representative. A democracy can be one of the worst forms of tyranny.

What makes many modern nations better than older ones isn't "democracy," but it's having a constitution with checks and balances.