The enlightenment mythos was almost as damaging was christianity. The greatest tragedy in human history may have been the christianization of Europe. The empirical side of the enlightenment was desperately needed to escape jewish mysticism that held us in ignorance for a millennia. Equality under the law, was important for the spread of commerce.
But, just as moving people from christianity’s mysticism via Darwin was, let’s say … incomplete, it is very hard to move people from equality of property rights, equality under the law, and the equality of family interests, to what the socialists accomplished, which was equality of opportunity, material equality, inequality under the law, eradication of the common law by legislative law, and the destruction of the nuclear and absolute nuclear family in pursuit of ‘individualism’.
We have a very hard time overturning this mythos. This mythos is even rampant in libertarianism. Libertarians are just as enamored of the fallacy of equality as are socialists. Libertarians want to retain meritocracy, sure. But most of us assume the same naive belief that if others ‘only understood’ they would adopt our system of values.
But that’s just demonstrably false, both logically, praxeologically, and empirically. The majority of the world detests property rights and individualism.