The true opportunity of free thinking without any restriction, censorship, fear of God, kings or governments, danger of blasphemy, demand for political correctness, desire for being conventional, need for winning over other people and so on, existed a long time ago. This was even before the organized society formation. After serving their family well and learning from the world and nature, the Elders of the hunter gatherer clans could retire early once they had few sons able enough to provide them the essentials such as food and protection. The elders of the hunter gatherer clans did the highest quality and purified thinking. And few Elite among them found the sublime truth and naturally became the high priest. The Elder i.e., the high priest of the clan was the administrative authority regarding that particular clan. Later, with the development of agriculture and cities, as the society grew bigger to such an extent that a professional and dedicated ruling class to rule the larger mass of people became mandatory. The Elders did not want to have that positions for various reasons, including the job being too mundane, too distracting, too much responsibilities etc. They delegated the position to the best and most righteous person in the clan under the auspices of their wisdom. These newly ordained Kings by the Elder or High Priest on behalf of the Divine, started to rule over the common people.

As the civilization spread across lands and the organization grew bigger and bigger, in order to rule it efficiently and "Justly", kings started to add restrictions on what you can do and think and what you cannot. Under those divinely ordained kings, you can enjoy certain liberties and privileges as "prescribed" by the king but you were not absolutely free. Those privileges and liberties can be modified or limited anytime by the King's wish and discretion. Under these primitive divinely ordained kings, ancient civilization flourished and reached its peak. Like anything material, which eventually start to disintegrate, so does those divinely ordained kings. They started to do unjust things, waged war against the meek and spoiled themselves with luxury, lust, extravaganza lifestyle and started to disregard the advice of the Elders or High priests. Over time the monarch declared him absolute authority on earth, thus eliminating need for any advisor or priest to back him up. Instead, they assumed the role of King, Priest, Lord of the Kingdom combined. Thus they became absolute dictatorial, tyrannical "Son of God" on earth. Many intelligent citizen under those kings realize the emptiness behind the throne and revolted. Kings controlled the initial revolt very expediently. Fearing the imminent death, many intelligent and visionary citizen escaped, typically to the other side across sea to build a new civilization. They carried with them only the shadow of truths that the high priests and kings possessed. The new visionaries built an entirely new civilization based on absolute freedom of the individuals. This was the birth of ancient democracy. Under the paradigm of individual freedom, the new civilization prospered for a period of time but eventually degenerated like their predecessors, but in this time only quicker. Ruling by People is almost equivalent of rule by mob and eventually failed. The only difference here is that those kings ruled for thousands of years but the the new democratic leaders ruled only for few hundreds years. Taking the lessons from both kings and democracy, some other visionaries built a new system of oligarchy (rule by few Senates). Initially they also prospered but eventually they failed and soon fell into monarchy. That was the first cycle form Monarchy to Democracy to Oligarchy [Senate] back to Monarchy. Out of the ashes of the second session of monarchy, the Phoenix of Aristocracy rose again (Oligarchy or rule by few Senates), then corporatocracy or capitalism [Ancient Phoenicians], radical communism [Epicurean or Pythagorean communism] then finally back to democracy again! This is the cycle of geopolitical structure, happening again and again. Every time people think this time it will work because their way is the new way [not realizing, it is not new or novel] and they have learnt from history. But every time it fails. How many  more times they has to fail, before they can realized that something is fundamentally wrong here? If someone keeps trying the same thing over and over again without any success but still keep trying the same thing hoping that one day everything will work out just fine, technically that is known as "insanity". With all those repeated failures in geopolitical history, people continues to keep trying the same thing which only proves either: 

1. Political leaders do not read history or books carefully or they do not have the time to read.
2. They read history but out of context without the backgrounds of that history and got it all wrong.

3. Humanity has a very short attention span or amnestic memory.

4. People are just insane, not realizing that they are trying the same strategy that failed earlier. 

5.There are some fundamental problem in our understanding about the nature of the reality and political problems associated with it. 

What is it? Do you know? 

With all those geopolitical turmoil, distorted views of reality, confused life, as well as widespread and rampant corruption, war, conflict, restriction, censorship, obfuscations and not to mention the emblematic codification of the symbolic representations of the signs pointing towards the hints suggesting the clues indicative of underlying allegory expressed in metaphors instead of a simple totem and ad infinitum creating a simulacrum devoid of any real substance what so ever and finally with millions of laws that limits your freedom of thought, humanity is slowing but surely losing their original free thinking capability that gave rise to this magnificent civilization. What a sad story! Despite all the restrictions, you still have infinity ways or degrees of freedom remaining. So, do not complain about restrictions persistently, instead find the Ways that overrides the restrictions. Against all those odds, if you still have the brain, heart and guts to think freely, when you find the glimpse of Truth, your joy will be proportionately gigantic too. So, do not be pessimistic. The truth has been always out there. Seek.