Parent post said:

> One might suspect that all our beneficial habits would break down if there weren't an almighty parental figure lying in wait to punish us

I interpreted this in the vein of a libertarian "we don't need a nanny state". And so I assumed that the person was thinking of the USA as a "permissive society in harmony" and of something like North Korea as an "less permissive society in disarray", as opposed to Sweden as a "less permissive society in harmony".

And so I wanted to challenge the notion that the USA is "permissive".