Ultimately, I believe Guye in his initial statement summed up pretty well the situation one ideally would hope to have on the hands, with im2smart4u's comments pretty much accounting for a couple of remarks made by Pylons.
Coming from one of the historically "corrupt" places on earth where the government tended/s to do what it more or less pleases and not really cares much for the benefit of the people, remarks like "so what?" on the possibiliy of limitation of personal freedoms, including free speech are really worrying. Methinks many don't really realize what they can lose, unless they grew up in a place that was re-trying to re-gain some of those freedoms. The government should be, ideally,a proportionate reflection of the desires of the people on how the society should be run, what it's general code of morals and ethics should comprise, and what inreactions the said society wishes to have with other societies. But more often than not, those who are deemed to be the "voice of the people" will try to further their own means and try to keep to the power. Or, as time passes, geniuinely believe that the are executing the general wish of the people, but having been "isolated" from the rest of the society, they might not realize that this is not exactly what people want.
One inetersting phenomena that sprung up with the social networks is the micro-local political blogs or forums, where the local communities can come together and try to pressure local officials into hearing their opinions (BBC recently covered that in relation to UK), and although sometimes the local desires are sacrificed for the greater good of the nation (e.g. where to build prisons, nuclear reactors, highways, etc), methinks this might be a more effective way of keeping the people "at the top" in loop with what the common folks want. Though, of course, sometimes, like now in Begium, for instance, the voice of the people is quite divided, and that's where those in the government should work off their pay by trying to reach a solution that would satisfy the majority of the people.
And although the government is supposed to keep alive and protect the society it is running, I am not really at ease with the ways that they do it, on occaison, like censorship. Look at Russia, for instance- the media is centralized, not much of an "opposition" to look at, the people in no way can complain about the dire economic situation in the rest of the country nor quizz the officials about what exactly, if at all, the "old dollars" from the last decade were invested in? There was a lot of talk of diversifying the economy, and the Russian government had a great chance of having the money and the means to attempt to do just that, but judging by the current situation, none of that diversification happened... Yet the folks in power have ensure that the next president stays in power for 6 years, not 4, most influential independent people with money (aka oligarchs) suddenly have "tax issues" so cannot sponsor any opposition activuty and many human rights layers, jorunalists covering tricky topics like Chechnya, or judges making rulings on significant cases (e.g. prosecution of a Moscow-based group of Neo-Nazis) are dropping dead all over the place with a worrying indifferent reaction from the rest of the society. Throw in international relations, where Russia and China don't mount much pressure on N. Korea or Iran (two countries that might have the means to destabilize peace in their respective regions and are looking with one eye at nuclear weapons option), and Russia playing "you pay or we cut the gas" with the rest of the Europe, also gets a few uneasy looks. Methinks at least a few of those aspects are a cause for concern and, methinks, and the ends don't always jusify the means.
