The trouble is that the world hasn't moved on, and it's not just in the US that it's gone backwards. Look at what has been happening in Europe with irrationalist opposition to new reproductive and genetic technologies. Admittedly, the UK is fairly enlightened on this ... but go and have a look at the new laws in Italy some time. Religious and quasi-religious encroachment on the public sphere is aggressive, confident, well-planned, and influential ... everywhere you look.

For me, the turning point wasn't so much 9/11. Well, it was important. But the widespread moral panic over the cloning of Dolly in 1996 (announced in early 1997) was what really started to alert me that we're going through the early years of a New Endarkenment: that irrationalism of an essentially religious kind was making a huge comeback, and that liberal political principles were (and remain) under serious threat.