I think a lot of negative trends fed off each other and gathered strength in the 60s, fed by the media hysteria over Watergate and the chance to 86 the hated Nixon, and the rise to power of the "soft sciences"---with a study to explain why everything Judeo/Euro/American society had believed for 3000 years was racist, sexist, homophobic, discriminatory and hazardous to the self esteem of some person or species. And then society actually began to respond and act on this academic agenda and say, "Well this Birkenstock wearing socialist says I shouldn"t________ (fill in the blank) any more so I guess I better quit, and I better make everybody else quits too." Liberal judges decided these new found truths had actually been hiding in the Constitution all along (who knew?) and made them law, with the blessing of the learned media. And since then it's just been rolling downhill.
