You're pretty much correct. We can call the repeal of DADT to be liberty but call the second amendment idiocy, or vice versa ("You can pry this gun from my cold dead hands, but i'll use it to shoot any f*gs as think they can get hitched," or something like that)

Freedom is relative. Communism was freedom in its own right, and the revolutions that toppled Communism also cried freedom. The freedom-loving founding fathers held slaves, etc., etc.,

2 issues.

1. The right to bear arms has more to do with keeping the government from ever becoming a tyranny than simply being a right to shoot whatever.  The first thing a tyrannical regime does it disarm the people (or at least try to).  One of the first rights established to us is the right to change our government if it ever extends beyond the means it was established for and becomes oppressive.  The only way a citizenry could ever overthrow and restablish a government is with arms.  It's a sad fact but one the founding fathers understood.

2. Slaves.  Most of the founding fathers owned slaves but didn't actualy believe in slavery itself.  At that time, most "freed" slaves still had a far harder time than did those owned by sympathetic owners.   There was also miles of red tape and money required to free slaves.  Thomas Jefferson, for example, found it more economical to own slaves, feed them well, shelter them well, pay them well, than it cost to actually free them.  Again a sucky deal that took far to long to alleviate.

You're right, we need to ban alcohol too. And make people take parenting tests.

I understand the logics behind both of those, the moral logic of slavery as better for people than an indifferent capitalism where you have no incentive for the health of the worker who can be easily replaced if he becomes too sick or weak to work, as well as the grand check-and-balance that is the 2nd amendment, i was merely providing examples that some people will vehemently support "freedom" in some guises, while opposing it in others.

Freedom and other political and economic concepts are mental constructs people use to understand and manage the world they live in.  It is a way to organize data they receive from the world.  So, in light of this, one approach to understand what people want is to provide a theoretical ideal state that would map to this, and see if it is what people are really after.  The impossible makes the ideals more clear in this context.

I would say, in light of this, if enough people were given stuff to placate their appetites and desires, in ways they didn't find personally destructive, a state could be one that could ultimately end up oppressive, and people wouldn't know it or care to know.  And in this, that is what I was asking about, if it really is freedom people value or merely the placating of appetites and desires. 

Next up, an analysis of Brave New World.

Well, there is a school of thought that Americans had become so content with their lives that they turned a blind eye to the oppression, lies, subjugation and dismantling of the Constitution (at least until the recent economic crisis that is).  The vigilance over the maintaining of freedoms, liberty and rights faltered by the comfort of false economic prosperity.

You should read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.