..?

It's kinda interesting to see how this word freedom seems to have special meaning to americans (?). Is "loaded" the right word for it?

It seems you automatically apply a lot of virtue to the word. I think over here, the word doesn't quite have as much connotation and we're well aware that there's good freedom and bad freedom.

Neither of those are accurate, you're romanticising things.

Humans want to be free on a small personal level because it's obviously in their interest. On a societal level freedom is an exception in world history and people have been content with that until living became too miserable and they needed change.
As for acts of artistic and scientific creation, those can lead to happiness or at least be a coping mechanism, or a search for glory, feeling like that will bring happiness. Ideas of a Higher Calling or Inspiration are romantic nonsense

it's very similar to his statement that the death penalty for drink driving would clearly lead to better outcomes/less harm...

The problem with these hypotheticals is not even that they're hypothetical it's that you're presuming that these policies would actually lead to better outcomes when there has been no substantiation of that claim

Like someone in 1920 could've said with the same amount of confidence "clearly banning alcohol will lead to better outcomes for society..." But that's not at all what happened. The outcomes were drastically worse. Cracking down on xyz can inadvertently lead to even bigger problems than the initial problem that caused the crackdown in the first place.

I think we do have a pretty good grasp of what it is that makes people happy, like meaningful relationships and social interactions, sufficient sleep, to self-realize through artistic expression or to feel a sense of mastery from overcoming appropriately challenging challenges.

When it comes to freedom, I think an important one is just being able to express yourself and your lifestyle free from judgment. So tolerance is important and societies that are better at gender equality and more tolerant of gay lifestyles is better from a utilitarian point of view.

Might seem like a redundant point, but there's more to freedom than just what's legal or not.

I believe theocracy in various forms tend to make people less happy.

Any chance you can recall where you heard this? I'm curious how these canards begin.