Sure as I know anything I know this, they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten, they’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people…better. And I do not hold to that. [Serenity, 2005]
So we just finished watching Joss Whedon’s master work again. I have watched and enjoyed a bunch of stuff he has done, but Firefly/Serenity is his very finest, in my opinion. And although there are many fun, hilarious, profound, and eloquent quotations from which to choose when it comes to the brilliant writing for the series and film, I like the one above the very best. The twentieth century especially saw repeated attempts at making people better, and they almost always meant death for the non-better and monstrous treatment of others. Whedon is exactly right: “A year from now, ten, they’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people…better.”
And I do not hold to that.
And we dare not forget.
There is only one thing that can make people “better” in the long run, and that is the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. No utopia will be had on this earth, because The Alliance is trying to solve the wrong problem, and they lack the power to solve the real one. Heck, most of the time they deny that the real problem even exists. And that willful blindness is what will lead us, over and over and over again, back to Miranda. Back to the Reavers. Back to assassins and bureaucrats who believe that the end justifies the means, no matter how bloody, no matter the toll in human lives.
Aquinas, Etc. 
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