Turkey, its the difference between a Democracy and a Republic - where a "Democracy" as such is rule grounded in "will of majority" and a Constitutional Republic is grounded in Natural Rights and while the govt generally reflects the will of the populace is still restrained from infringing on, and charged with protecting said rights.

In a "Democracy" as such the only rights you have are the rights that are "most popular" on a given day. A Constitutional Republic is a different story.

There is a popular phrase (often attributed to Franklin, but not provably AFAIK):

A Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

A Constitutional Republic is when a well armed sheep contests the vote.

It basically boils down to this: do you have rights as a human, irrespective of their current popularity? Of course as a practical matter, there are methods to change a Constitution via super-majorities.

My point is simply that the high threshold involved in changing Govt's relationship with your rights is quite intentional.

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As far as "Dozens of Stable Democracies removed from mob rule" I would say a couple things:

First, that stability is not necessarily the best metric.

Second, whether they are removed from mob rule is also quite open to debate.

Really, there is a huge discussion that could be had here.

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As for our current involvement with tyrants vs populace... it has not changed as much as you seem to think. Go google up Bahrain for example. Or the countries in Pipelinistan we have relations with. In some cases we have good reasons, in others... I would personally say much less so.

For who could be free when every other man's humour might domineer over him? - John Locke (2nd Treatise, sect 57)