Introduction

A welfare state is a state asserted by its rulers and other supporters to be dedicated to the welfare of the citizens. The great myth of modernism in its fully developed form is made up of the passionate convictions that human nature is either nonexistent or inherently good and inherently extremely plastic. The great myth of modernism is what mythologists call a monomyth, though it might better be called a monomaniacal myth. In its weaker variations it pervades, underlies, and overarches the dominant public culture, though it obviously coexists with many other myths in the pluralistic civilization and is quite shunned by millions in some of the subcultures. Few Americans outside of our ivy-covered institutions of pure rationalism are complete modernists. Most true believers vary in their emphases on its many dimensions, and the more millennial strains of the myth are normally found only in situations of extremely ambivalent conflict between hope and despair which trigger extreme millennialism.