<<whether moderation has ceased to rank among important values>>

Even *if* it has fallen into disuse, or victim to disinterest, it may (in a sense that is, perhaps, also related to your sense of measure) remain important. The more so for such fall.

However, I suspect it has not, at least not entirely.

Moderation is inherently undramatic and doesn't sell well. I wonder if the duration of (any) crisis is not best dramatized as the conflict of extremes, while its conclusion may be punctuated with terms of moderation. Such as, for example, in this country, Murrow's measured words near the conclusion of the McArthy era. Dramatically, they are cut to fit and this probably accounts for some of their appeal. All that raises the question whether drama is not, in some sense and to some (limited) extent, the measure of crisis in public life.

I would be interested to know more about this architect Le Corbusier and what he meant.

Probably not what struck me when I visited Salem, Mass, where the colonial buildings are at the scale of human manual labor.