The New York Times, in reporting on the latest (preliminary) crime data released by the FBI, summarizes things this way:  “The number of violent crimes in the United States dropped significantly last year, to what appeared to be the lowest rate in nearly 40 years. “

Among the other findings:

• In all regions, the country appears to be safer.

• The odds of being murdered or robbed are now less than half of what they were in the early 1990s, when violent crime peaked in the United States.

• Small towns, especially, are seeing far fewer murders: In cities with populations under 10,000, the number plunged by more than 25 percent last year.

• Robberies fell by 9.5 percent last year, after dropping by 8 percent the year before.

• Nationally, murder fell by 4.4 percent last year.

• Forcible rape—which excludes statutory rape and other sex offenses—fell by 4.2 percent.

• Aggravated assault fell by 3.6 percent.

• Property crimes—including burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and arson—by fell 2.8 percent, after a 4.6 percent drop the year before.

This continues a remarkable social trend in America that began more than a decade-and-a-half ago, when crime was overwhelming many major urban centers and the expectation was that because of demography, crime would get worse, not better. There were concerns that our free democratic institutions could not withstand much more crime without a terrible counterreaction, including a rollback of civil liberties.

Instead, we’ve seen a decline in crime that is simply staggering.

There are undoubtedly many explanations for it, from higher incarceration rates to private security to improved technology to advances in policing. We are able to spot, and respond to, crime trends far more quickly than ever before.

And perhaps the changes in crime are due to a shift in our cultural attitudes as well. In The Great Disruption, Francis Fukuyama cited historical examples of societies undergoing periods of moral decline followed by periods of moral recovery. In the case of America, he argued, the aftermath of the cultural breakdown of the 1960’s has given way to a reassessment and recovery of social and moral norms. Such “re-norming” will not occur in every social class all at once; in some instances it may take hold in one stratum but not in another. But partial progress is progress nonetheless.

The drop in crime over the last 15 years or so is among the greatest social success stories in our history, and it should act as an antidote to cultural pessimism and fatalism.