With the accuracy of hindsight, and a vantage point that lets us take in centuries at a sweep, we observe how the ideas that flourished in the Renaissance and Age of Reason led to the Enlightenment and its political reforms, and then to the Industrial Revolution. But those who are fighting for the emergence of new ideas do not have this perspective. The dawn of a new age is a slow and cloudy affair, and it's sometimes hard to see what difference we are making. Objectivist ideas remain far outside the academic mainstream. The universities are filled with an ugly nihilism.
Politicians keep repeating the mantras of the welfare state.
Nevertheless, we are not living in the Dark Ages. Communism is in collapse around the globe, as one country after another revolts against the naked threats and empty promises of collectivism. Free-market ideas are in the ascendancy throughout the West. Tax revolts seem to have put an upper limit on the growth of government. They have tried to impose speech codes to prevent blasphemy against the egalitarian faith.