US Authoritarianism

I'm looking at authoritarianism as a spectrum, where someone can force their ideals unto someone else to some varying degree of force, and that is a concept that is politically agnostic, at least in the sense of right and left, conservative and progressive. Some conservatives hold conservative values but do not believe that they have a right to force those values on others, and some progressives believe so strongly in their values that they are willing to force them on others. My point is that ANY force used on others so that they conform to your ideals is a form of and some degree of authoritarianism. The point I disagreed with was that authoritarianism is strictly characteristic of right wing, conservative politics. It's a weird world view that doesn't align with reality in any practical way, and persisting in that world view is ignorant at best and extremely dangerous at worst because extreme authoritarianism of any flavor leads to immeasurable suffering as we've seen many times over the years. Ie, Chinese cultural revolution versus nazi Germany, both disastrous authoritarian movements, but coming from very different political ideals.

That said, laws are meaningless without authority to back them, so some level of authoritarianism is also NECESSARY in any government or social contract. This is a critical point to my entire rant here. You can't eliminate authoritarianism if you want to have a functioning society, but it needs to be very very limited.