I do know that societies go through cycles - I'm old enough to have lived through and "experienced" the sixties, and it was a rough time. In fact I went overseas with the Army in mid-65 and returned at the end of 66; coming back to the US at the end of that eighteen months was like the difference between night and day, as they say, beginning with my being called a "babykiller" by a ticket agent in the SF airport. Music had changed, clothing had changed, there were angry demonstrations in the streets, rancor filled the radio and TV - it was bad. Then we got to "Watergate", and the backbiting, infighting, and betrayals got even worse. In fact, I believe today is the thirtieth anniversay of Nixon's resignation, a very dark day indeed. Yet only six relatively short years later we elected a decent, steady conservative to the presidency in Ronald Reagan, with the help of a lot of reasonable people who took a good look at the candidates and crossed party lines to do what was best for the country. We returned to a period of relative calm and worldwide peace, and strong prosperity. The human spirit seems to have a built-in feedback mechanism which will let it go off on the wrong track for only so long before it starts looking for a switch back to the mainline, so to speak. I'm hoping it doesn't take another 911 for us to start behaving more grown-up, but sooner or later I think we will.
In the meantime I think your idea of "personally bucking the trend" is fine. You have to know your own center and stick with family members, religion, interests, friends and whatever else matters most to you - that should be the center of your life, and allow you to avoid whenever possible elements of the culture that irritate you the most. But I think it also helps to occasionally take a jab at those elements. I try never to let a week go by without at least sending one nasty e-mail or letter of complaint to some media outlet or public figure - that way I feel I'm doing some little part to help reverse those parts of the culture I find most objectionable. In his talk Ben Stein mentioned that he had campaigned for Bush in 2000 and at one point his agent told him that he might ruin his career in Hollywood by doing so. Stein replied that he didn't think that was going to happen, but he wouldn't care if it did because his freedom of speech was important to him, and he would still have his personal life, wife and children which were most important of all. He's a very smart man.....
That's liberalism in a nutshell, the outlook on life of spoiled, selfish child: they want to do what they want, think that they are entitled to whatever they want, and, when things go wrong (as they are wont to do), they demand that someone save them from the consequences of their foolish behavior.
One thing that particularly strikes me is the pervasive resistance to facing reality (economic, biological, cultural, etc.) in our society. People want to do what they want to do, and so believe what they want to believe, and reality means nothing. Jesus Christ could come down from Heaven and point out, for instance, the destructive effects of family breakdown on society and even on themselves and they would ignore Him.