Sure, I wasn't trying to be all "rah, rah, authoritarianism!" in my post (though several posters seem to have taken it that way, so maybe I wasn't clear enough). My point was more that our notions of freedom can sometimes be rather myopic, and miss the forest for the trees, such that we can become so un-free that even (some!) authoritarian states can feel much freer (until, as you note, you piss off the wrong people, which is obviously a huge problem—or you happen to be of the wrong ethnicity, or wrong religion, et c.—I am not trying to defend authoritarianism).