Humility, the forgotten virtue

The ever sensible Don Wycliff, public editor for the Chicago Tribune, writes about changes in newspaper readership in his column this week:

Besides the overwhelming shift by readers from telephone and snail-mail contacts to e-mail, the most notable change I've seen is the willingness of people--readers, commentators, activists, everybody--to eschew humility and display what can only be called unabashed moral and intellectual arrogance.

I thought that these displays couldn't get more shameless than they were during Bill Clinton's presidency, when it seemed all restraint had been lost and all of his critics were ready to pick up stones and have at him, presumably after having examined their own consciences and found themselves "without sin."

But the advent of George W. Bush has given rise to a viciousness and loss of restraint unparalleled in my experience. People seem to have lost completely their moral compass.

Read the column in its entirety here.