"ism"

 “Man was born for peace and liberty, and became miserable and cruel only through the action of insidious and oppressive laws. And I believe therefore that if man be given laws which harmonize with the dictates of nature and of his heart he will cease to be unhappy and corrupt.”

This notion, that humanity is born good and requires only a bit of social tinkering to be made happy and free, is at the heart of every “ism” of the last two centuries and leads from the Storming of the Bastille to the Soviet gulags, Auschwitz, the Cultural Revolution, and Critical Race Theory.