Crusading Movements

Despite the great variety of issues in a series of crusading movements among the intelligentsia during the twentieth century, several key elements have been common to most of them:

1. Assertions of a great danger to the whole society, a danger to which the masses of people are oblivious.
2. An urgent need for action to avert impending catastrophe.
3. A need for government to drastically curtail the dangerous behavior of the many, in response to the prescient conclusions of the few.
4. A disdainful dismissal of arguments to the contrary as either uninformed, irresponsible, or motivated by unworthy purposes.

Sounds like the Left. If you don’t have an impending catastrophe then create one.

H/T: Sowell on grand movements

Source: The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation As a Basis for Social Policy (2013) by Thomas Sowell.