The unsung development miracles of our time: Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria

The rule of law and proper markets strike me as much more important. They do often go hand in hand with democracy, though.

>there are some cultures to which democratization is simply incompatible

There's no evidence at all to believe that democracy wouldn't work in China, as it's never been tried. On the other hand, if you look at the downfall of the Soviet Union, Russia's experiment with democracy has been quite a success, even if it's not so perfect a freedom as we're party to in the US. It's certainly not Stalinist and the very existence of organized resistance movements in Russia, something that would have been entirely unheard-of thirty years ago, is a sign that they've made huge strides in the right direction, and their global standing seems to have benefited.

>Even here in the US, we're finding that our rights to move freely must be tempered by TSA searches, PATRIOT act and other impingements in the name of security

If by "security" you mean "security theatre", then sure. The vast majority of academics disagree with the new restrictions, and most people I know think they're absurd.

>What if that is actually the end-run for civilization and it's actually the US that is behind the political ideology curve?

Let's all hope not! I cannot understand this argument, as there seems to be no substance to it. There's a weight of literature on the value of freedom (e.g. John Locke, Voltaire), and little inquiry in this regard.

>We seem to be moving inexorably toward China-like "freedom with caveats" direction, and the electorate actually seems to prefer it

I have no idea how you could come to this conclusion. The vast majority of tea party anxiety over Obama was that he was restricting freedom too much. The main issue of the protesters was that their freedom was threatened, at least in their perception, and whether the candidates they chose are actually working to improve freedom is not quite so relevant as the reasons they chose such candidates.

Quite the contrary, just two weeks ago the US state of California came closer to legalizing marijuana than has any other entity for the past thirty years. A general movement toward restricted freedom, indeed. We're seeing such major gains such as legalized abortion and gay marriage even in highly religious regions such as South America and, aparently, Tunisia, and many countries with a long history of human rights violations, e.g. Bangladesh, Vietnam, Nicaragua, have improved markedly in recent years -- the current state of affairs is close to the freeest many such countries have ever seen. You don't hear about all the good things happening in the world in the news as much, but they're happening. The doctrine that freedom of speech is an inalienable human right may have been implemented in the US some 234 years ago, but it only became international law 60 years ago. Progress, indeed.