I think Enlightenment “rights-talk” started it. It found a home with strong-willed windbags who confuse articulation with meaning and who like to feel their Wheaties in public.
American social history has been the slow playing-out of the misbegotten exaltation of “rights” as the be-all and end-all. People have built whole philosophies around it. And while “rights-talk” keeps proving destructive to civilization, people resolutely conclude that society must then be destroyed.
...and thus you have masses of men vacating their natural positions of social leadership. And to make it feel more right, there are those who advocate it in loud, firm voices of proud self-righteousness. After all, if we all want our “rights,” none of those old social norms can stand in our way. And none saw it coming.