Authoritarian regimes actively target personal autonomy

"Every despotism has a specially keen and hostile instinct for whatever keeps up human dignity, and independence. ... [T]o de-personalise man, this is the dominant drift of our epoch. ....

"What is threatened to-day is moral liberty, conscience, respect for the soul, the very nobility of man.

~ Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Amiel's Journal, June 17, 1852