A comment I prepared elsewhere that took on a life of its own.
This is the fire in which we burn: Humans are self-perfectible. The only things holding us back are some inefficient and hurtful habits. Once the brave new set of habits are adopted, everybody will be perfect and happy. But some people don’t want to adopt the new habits. We need a strong authoritarian power to force good habits upon those holdouts. Any failure in this plan is proof that we didn’t get rid of the holdouts fast enough because we personally have already been perfected, so the failure could not possibly have been our fault in any way.
Behold the Hegelian triple synthesis of arrogance, blindness and Daddy Issues.