Comment by kennykartman

The USA centric view I was referring to is the one where lack of freedom is wrong, since it benefits the USA ideology of maximal freedom. Which is not in generally shared by all western countries (in Europe socialism and state ownership is much more present, for instance), and it's not necessary the most accurate view of real USA (there might be more "free" countries, like Switzerland), it's just that it benefits the perceived image of USA.

With this in mind, no, I don't share the view that a strong government should trust the people: people can easily be steered by foreign parties that want to gain soft power (example: Russia and recent anti-EU propaganda in Poland, Romania and Georgia). It's very hard to draw a line between what is "right" and what is "too much", but I don't think that excessive freedom is an obvious route to an healthy society (that is, a society that has peace and people are happy).