Especially when you talk about police states being imposed. You have to remember there is an army of online morons (on both sides) asking for even harder measures. Mass arrests and all that good stuff.
I honestly think this right here has become the dividing line in the USA (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the developed world):
One group believes we need to cede all our freedoms and responsibilities so big daddy government can come in and save us from ourselves, while the other group believes we the people are the ones who are ultimately responsible for ourselves and our society at large.
The second tenet of Meliorism is a belief in the natural goodness of man, corrupted by society. This emanates from the work and thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau transferred the struggle for good and evil from within the breast of the individual to society. Evil comes from society, and therefore, by fixing society — tinkering with society's traditions, customs, language, laws, and norms — we can eradicate evil. This social engineering will restore the natural goodness and natural equity of the world initially corrupted by society.
The conservative's counter-argument to these tenets and to Meliorism in general is what I've called "The Tragic Nature" of the human condition. The rebuttal to the first premise is that human nature is constant and not progressing. We, in the present, are not at all different — neither better nor worse — from our eldest ancestors. To the conservative, as Russell Kirk once explained, "real progress consists in the movement of mankind towards the understanding of norms, and towards conformity to norms."1
The norms of yesteryear are as applicable today as they were when first established by our ancestors. The farther we "progress" away from them, the worse our lives and civilizations become.
I honestly think this right here has become the dividing line in the USA (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the developed world):
One group believes we need to cede all our freedoms and responsibilities so big daddy government can come in and save us from ourselves, while the other group believes we the people are the ones who are ultimately responsible for ourselves and our society at large.
Here's an enlightening article about it: https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/the-bad-roots-of-progressivism-make-for-a-poisonous-tree