When you are a utopianist and an atheist, then your only real option is to replace the God who will bring heavenly paradise with an all-powerful government who will bring earthly paradise.
Since those types are inevitably also “ends justify the means” believers, as they have dispensed with any basis for objective morality, then anything it takes to achieve that all-powerful government is justifiable in their eyes.
So all this misery goes back to the initial temptation in the Garden. First you give in to the temptation that you need not obey (or even believe in) God, then you give in to the temptation that you can make yourself (or your creations, such as government) take the place of God. They are not necessarily either miseducated, or stupid, but merely sinful, and a sinful mind naturally tends towards this type of thinking.
Bingo. Very good analysis. This is the root problem.