This means that on the moral front, more liberal views — like support for same-sex marriage — are allowed to quickly spread and have gone from being seen as radical to mainstream. But even on this issue, we are becoming two Americas: one where same-sex marriage is legal in some states and another where it’s specifically outlawed.

But on the military front, it means that revelations about recent government snooping on Americans doesn’t sound as many alarms as it should have. Politically, it also means that some of the old ideological battle lines on national security have been scrambled so that Republicans no longer get all the credit, nor Democrats all the blame.

These new realities have changed the conversation about the role and size of government, about the line between individual liberty and the collective good, about the meaning of personal responsibility and societal responsibility.

They have also signaled that conservative arguments on many of these issues are losing their resonance nationally, and that the Republican pool of potential voters is shrinking while the Democratic pool expands.