Moving costs

If you have to ask “if my government could get away with x where (f(x), x=”draconian, lack of due process law or edict”), would they do it? 

…and the answer is “yes”, then Houston, we have a problem.

If you think your government only lacks external restraint in its execution of power amplification and not a temperate internal constraint, then why are you living in said country.

Most of the time, the answer is moving costs, both in monetary and sentimental terms.

Because history has given its verdict time and time again:  the outcome is not favorable for peace-loving men, and judging the time where rule phase-transitions from a republic or democracy into something "else" is notoriously difficult to accomplish in practice.