There was at one time a broad consensus in America on the fundamental questions of personal responsibility and freedom. Voluntary association and acceptance of a shared body of ideals held the American identity intact, conferring it anew on generations of immigrants. This shared vision no longer binds. The communist order which was maintained by the iron fist from above now has splintered into ethnic entities which savage each other. In an empire once coerced into unity by ideology, national and ethnic rivalries now flicker and flame.
Bloodlines are again the arbiters of identity.
In the Soviet experience, the Party determined what truth was. Now there are few in either the East or the West who are sure that truth exists at all. A multi-cultural society easily becomes a society without values. Some would argue that even the term values is suspect, as it implies a measure of taste, rather than the certainty of permanent things by which one evaluates. What was once weighed against natural law or revealed divine truth has been debased to cultural or personal preference.