For centuries the United States has claimed that humanity are sovereign in all it's founding documents, yet continues to this day to criminally enslave free people, including Oregon still, despite repealing it's exception from the ban on slavery in it's constitution.

I would like to answer first with G.K. Chesterton who wrote:

I would here suggest one element in the change which is perhaps too much neglected; which at any rate ought not to be neglected; the nature of a vow. I might express it by saying that pagan antiquity was the age of status; that Christian mediaevalism was the age of vows; and that sceptical modernity has been the age of contracts; or rather has tried to be, and has failed.

It was for this very reason of a crowd no longer believing in gods - or the sacred - such as they were called Romans and of whom it is commonly said that decadence ruined this empire, that Christianity set out, which also began as a small current and became so strong, rather stronger, than the old Roman Empire. Man always seems to create and get both, so that modernity has its blessings as well as its misfortunes. How many true Christians are actually left to oppose the ever-rising oppression depends, I think, on the degree of suffering of the people. I fear that it is not yet great enough (though I do not wish it to be) and until those among the people have had enough of everything that makes them be unfree, we have probably not yet reached the top.

I don't think that technology and the pursuit of freedom alone will make any difference without the basis of Christianity. (And the faiths of other cultures). Where that base has died or is too weak, hopefully it may be revived.