David, I respect you and our opinions aren't usually excessively different, but for fun, I'm going to counter argue this point:
LGBT Rights - Agreed, however, I'd argue that they've overstepped their bounds. Guys who believe they are women don't belong in Women's athletics. Prescribing hormone blockers to pre-teen kids so they don't develop their natural adult organs should be child abuse and not a "civil rights" issue.
Environmental Improvements - Agree although again, this shift is as much due to the explosion of Natural gas usage as any legislation. In fact, if we were to have listened to our "green energy" & "Save the world" ecologists who rail against Natural gas usage and waited until even cleaner technologies were available, we'd not seen a fraction of our recent savings.
Access to Education - To whom and at what cost? Yes, we now provide educational opportunity to every individual regardless of citizenship, however, in turn have made our inner city schools require Spanish speaking teachers and have dropped from one of the highest rated G20 education systems to one of the worst G20 education systems. In addition, we've accelarated college expenses at 2-4 times the annual inflation rate and have saddled Americans with a new $1T in school debt (that's non-dischargable). Finally, you've created a system where we've promoted college education to such an extent that the average and below average graduates can't find jobs that utilize their degrees (or even require them) as we've out-educated large segments of the job market.
Deconstruction of Communism in China - Wholeheartedly agree. Open trade with China (wasn't this initiated by Nixon?) has slowly done what it was hoped to do. China's people live a significantly improved life with significantly improved freedoms. Its still Communist. But its a much softer communist.
Reduction of overall violence in American Society - I think this is statistically correct, although I'd argue that its shifting away from the prior trends. I'd also note that we as a society have significantly increased our tolerance for violence. We don't even talk about gang shootings any more. We are completely numb to the murders that are shown nearly daily on the local news. We have factions of society that celebrate rioting in the streets. I saw last week (or two) when the St. Louis police officer was acquited, that business were boarding up their windows (like a hurricane was coming) to minimize the damage that the 'peaceful' protesters would cause. I'd also note the general acceptance of groups like Antifa who regularly condone violence against those whose opinions aren't aligned to their own.
