1. I have the feeling that this is not limited to the silicon valley. It feels very similar in my industry (banking) and I assume some other industries too.

2. I think there is more than one force at hand. A more militant liberalism may be one force but I can think of another major one: social medias. Basically an army of "anonymous" twitter / facebook / other accounts (they may not be individually anonymous but together they are), waiting for any pretext to shout their indignation, always looking for new ways to be offended. I don't think the population and opinions behind is a new evolution, but it just has a very powerful way to express itself now, by inundating social medias with angry comments, memes, effectively running virtual mob-lynchings.

This is combined with a traditional bias in medias to give some legitimacy to "the street", i.e. if enough people are demonstrating, vociferating slogans, they are deemed to somehow be representative of the opinion of the population when in reality they only represent the opinion of this limited group. Combine that bias with social medias, and medias tend to report these outrages as a mainstream opinion, even if it is only that of a vocal minority, adding their own weight to the lynching. I don't think we should give much credit to these social media storms, no more than an angry mob should be a party to a civilized debate.