Nothing I could write would improve on that sentence. part the fifth

Precisely:

... the kids who come in are often times high on themselves and their SAT scores and have increasingly not been exposed to alternative moral systems, like traditional religion, in which they'd hear, "Yeah, you're smart, but so what? Are you good?" Or have pointed out to them that not a few brilliant men have gone on to do profound evil. So they think of themselves and their unconsidered philosophy as those entitled to rule in a more just world. They're smarter than everyone else—the SAT said so!—and intelligence is the sole criterion of worth they've been held to. They go to the best schools which are often echo chambers of the intelligence-über-alles ethic and learn What Smart People think and consider themselves Intellectuals (without ever running across the pejorative origins of the term, which contrasted with "scholar"), emerging as unconscious, smug élitists and natural Progressives.

I've never understood the attraction of Rousseau, even back when I was a smug lefty elitist. The Volgi lays out the repeated "progressive" attempts to build the new secular Jereusalem on a mountain of skulls. If you don't read anything else this month, go read this.

Then ponder the Democrat's Healthcare plan. And tremble.

And while you're over there, check out the Czar of Muscovy's challenge to smarty-pants lefty intellectuals.