It was certainly an attention-getting headline in the Wall Street Journal the other day: “America Pulls Back from Values that Once Defined It.”

“Patriotism, religion and hard work hold less importance,” the subhed ran.

But is the story true? There are critics of the poll, and we will get to that.

Meanwhile, does any other country relentlessly poll and examine itself as much as the United States of America? Was 1,019 people a large enough sample size to draw conclusions about how 332 million Americans are thinking?

The story is this: Compared with how people responded to the same poll 25 years ago, America is slipping fast into a European-style secular state with little religious observance, less work ethic (four-week work days anyone?) and less care for the motherland. Maybe parts of Eastern Europe and the Russians are the only ones headed in the opposite direction these days. Here’s how the Journal summarized it all:

Patriotism, religious faith, having children and other priorities that helped define the national character for generations are receding in importance to Americans, a new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll finds.

The survey, conducted with NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan research organization, also finds the country sharply divided by political party over social trends such as the push for racial diversity in businesses and the use of gender-neutral pronouns.

Some 38% of respondents said patriotism was very important to them, and 39% said religion was very important. That was down sharply from when the Journal first asked the question in 1998, when 70% deemed patriotism to be very important, and 62% said so of religion.

These aren’t just tiny signs of movement; these are huge drops in nearly every category.

The share of Americans who say that having children, involvement in their community and hard work are very important values has also fallen. Tolerance for others, deemed very important by 80% of Americans as recently as four years ago, has fallen to 58% since then.