All you have done there is highlight that at one time you lived in a more f**ked country than it is now. The problems of your past are mostly an American problem which didnt happen to anywhere near the same degree as in other countries in the world with the exception of South Africa of old.Thank you for saying that.
I've heard lots of people say stuff like this - that rights codified by Governments only ever decrease and never increase. I've lived a different experience.
Where I live, gay marriage used to be illegal. Now it is legal. Interracial marriage was illegal until the 1970s. That is unfathomable now. Black people were lawfully blocked from buying homes in certain areas. Those racist practices are now illegal, and rights for blacks are significantly expanded.
Smoking pot used to be illegal. Cops used it to throw hundreds of thousands of people in prison for the victimless act of smoking weed. Now pot is legal here in Virginia. Our local cops are pissed about it too because it was the pretext they used to fuck with people. In fact there were more arrests and prosecutions for pot smoking than for every violent crime combined. This is true throughout the United States. So our cops are not focused on protecting people, and actually seconding much of their time fucking with pot smokers.
One more example: Our local district attorney is now disallowing cops from searching cars that they pulled over for broken tail lights and shit like that. This has always been a pretext to harass black people and poor people and arrest them for things that white people or rich people never get troubled with.
So anyway, freedom where I live has expanded significantly, and it's because we have good governance. We used to be a hardcore conservative state, and in the past 20 years we changed to being a liberal blue state. As a direct result we have far more freedoms.
Liberalism your new word for Socialism which is in fact pure Communism is about curtailing peoples rights and freedoms so they can live under the control of a few. Socialist and Communists care not for people or their freedom. Recent history tells you that with Hitler and Stalin.