There is a reason why so many voters have complained that they don’t recognize their country, their culture or the direction life appears to have taken. The nation’s basic tenets are in decline, and the public knows it.

“Americans’ ratings of U.S. moral values, consistently negative through the years, have slipped to their lowest point in seven years. More than four in five (81 percent) now rate the state of moral values in the U.S. as only fair or poor,” writes Jim Norman, a Gallup analyst.