This is your money sentence. Down hill is one view, miles away across a flat plain is another.
Away from what you ask?
The purpose of liberalism and of the current extremely successful quest for change is to move away from Victorian era morals and manners. The goal of liberalism is freedom from what is perceived as the regimented and stifling shackles of Christian moral ism.The progress of progressives is movement is away from Christian Victorian society.
If we can postulate evolving social structures based on the new protestant ethics and morals of the Reformation, the system peaked around the turn of the 20th century. Since that time there was a tendency to move away. All the old ways are rejected. All the old taboos are to be embraced and experienced. All the accumulated knowledge of cultural human history is to be disposed and trashed.
All the old ways are being replaced with the new ways constructed from thin air by the liberal enlightenment. It should be viewed as an irreversible fiat accompli.
The Liberal trend is successful and in the absence of massive blood shed irreversible. The only people willing to shed that blood are the radical fundamentalist Muslims of Al Queda and the Taleban.
Thats what the participants flatter themselves into thinking.
I believe, however, that the appearance of such is merely two things:
1) The disaffectation of the masses with politics ("my vote won't matter anyway")
2) The separation of the mores of the cultural "elite" (candidates, acamedicians, Gramscian infiltratees) from those of the masses.
There was a reason Sarah Palin drew hyperactive crowds. With anyone decent at the top of the ticket, they'd have won in a landslide.
Cheers!