American founder St. George Tucker prepared an American edition of Blackstone, updating it with commentaries and footnotes applicable to American government. 

He wrote: 

"It is easy to perceive that a government originally founded upon consent, and compact, may by gradual usurpations on the part of the public functionaries, change its type, altogether, and become a government of force. In this case, the people are as completely enslaved as if the original foundations of the government had been laid by conquest.

"Thus, the nature of a government, so far as respects the freedom of the people, may be considered as depending upon the nature of the bond of their union. If the bond of the union be the voluntary consent of the people, the government may be pronounced to be free; where constraint and fear constitute the bond, the government is no longer the government of the people, and consequently they are enslaved."

What bond do most citizens today have with their government--one of voluntary consent or one of constraint and fear? 

Certainly we have more voluntary consent and less constraint and fear than many people around the world, but how do we compare to, say, most citizens in the 1950s or 1980s or even the 1920s?