Ah, the Purgists are back, though in truth, they never really leave us. It’s not even a sane argument but the dark brooding of a psychopath’s wet dream, a psychotic belief that Utopia must come at the cost of inflicting a massive amount of human suffering, degradation, and punishment. Sin, after all, must be purged, and what is more sinful than modern civilization? Of course, the suffering must be born by others, the masses, never by themselves, safe behind their ivory towers. Too many people in charge of too many things think like this. If we could purge this parasitic form of thinking from the souls of men, how much better off would we have been as a species? How many wars and injustices would have been averted, how fewer drops of innocent blood would have been spared?