LBJ’s Chaotic Society at work.
Whenever a "liberal" uses the term "society," he almost always actually means government. So a promise of a "great society" was actually a boast that he would produce a great government.Republicans should talk about a great society; in fact Ronald Reagan did - but he called it "a shining city on a hill." It is appropriate to talk aspirationally about greatness of society - but it is arrogant to presume to suggest that you would be capable of administering a greater government than, say, George Washington was. By that I do not mean statically, that Washington's actual administration cannot be bettered, but dynamically - in the sense that Washington was creating the precedents and rules by which his successors have learned to operate.
The presumptuous "liberal" assumes that what he does not understand cannot be important. An attitude which manifests itself in "objective" journalists who think of Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns" as being an oxymoron . . .