(1) what had gone wrong with the project of Enlightenment, with the unity of scientific and moral progress, and with schemes for the improvement of human society? And: (2) why is it that well-meaning attempts to fix society’s problems so often end up making things even worse?

The ideology of high modernism provides, as it were, the desire; the modern state provides the means of acting on that desire; and the incapacitated civil society provides the leveled terrain on which to build (dis)utopias.

My case is that certain kinds of states, driven by utopian plans and an authoritarian disregard for the values, desires, and objections of their subjects, are indeed a mortal threat to human well-being.