[Agema]

Largely I agree with you with a couple of caveats.

The trade-off made for decentralisation is one of cohesion. If too much room is left within a political entity for localised people to apply differing laws, it can cause atomisation, people start to wonder about the relevance of the whole and increasingly fail to identify with others. To me, the US seems to have a pretty good balance of the federal state imposing several standards from the top, but leaving decent room for individual states to manoeuver under that.

It can be beneficial to restrict liberty. I agree it is appropriate to define liberty in order to make appropriate judgements. But society as a whole may have the rights to choose on something that affects all, like gun ownership/control, whereas something based around the individuals concerned like pornography can be better left to individual control.