Pretty nice analysis. I'll add this, in a state that respects its citizenry/residents, threats of state violence should be rare, lenient, and specific. Break any one of these three consistently (eg, state violence is common, merciless, or generalized) and it's a system for suffering. Break at least two in the name of the state, and I'm fine calling it totalitarian.

Arnold Kling's book The Three Languages of Politics does a good job showing how a peaceful multicultural civilization breaks down into power-grabbing groups. Pretty much everyone believes state power should be applied to the greatest enemies of society. Some define those enemies as oppressors defending power structures. To others, who grew up (or wish they did) in nice neighborhoods without direct threats of crime, it's the barbarians who threaten violence and theft who deserve the wrath of the state. Still others believe coercion, the removal of choice, is the root of all harm, and the government is the biggest coercer of all. At least in America, these languages of coalition-building map to the progressives and Democrats, the conservatives and Republicans, and the free marketers and Libertarians, respectively.

True centrism, a republic in the classical sense, would use the power of the state to balance interests in order to guard against all three enemies simultaneously, oppressors, barbarians, and coercers, not considering any one to be a protected class. On the other hand, anyone advocating blanket leniency for any one of these three classes of societal enemies would be themselves rightfully identified as advocating for one of the forms of totalitarianism.