Noting The Decline Of An Old Virtue

As virtues go, modesty has little to brag about these days. Maybe it was never destined to be a cardinal virtue in America—land of the self-made, self-expressive individualist. But a poll commissioned by In Character (which subtitles itself “A Journal of Everyday Virtues”) finds broad agreement that modesty is ebbing as a factor in daily life. Forty-nine percent of adults agreed strongly and 34 percent agreed somewhat that “Americans are placing less importance on modesty than they did a generation ago.”