Perhaps I should have said "since the Red Scare" or "since the War on Drugs"

In fact the end of McCarthy came after McCarthy. That particular abomination universally being understood as one the darkest periods is also progress.

I’m also somewhat certain the idea of any net loss of freedom over the last 50 years would be considered a bad joke by anyone not cis/white/hetero/male. Into the 70s, you weren’t allowed to take a job or have a bank account without your husband’s permission.

And if you insist on limiting this to just the freedoms of the all-American white bro: the Boomer generation was still subject to the draft. Spending two years in an Asian rainforest in perpetual danger of dying would seem to be quite worse, liberty-wise, than... whatever you're calling "authoritarianism".