Humility

My father was in the Marines, and one time when I was a kid I found a kind of "yearbook" thingee from his days on Parris Island. I remember there was a phrase in there, I don't know if it was on a statue, or just written in the book, I can't remember; but I remember what it said: "Uncommon Valor was a Common Virtue." Can you really use "Marines" and "thingee" in the same sentence? Hmm.

Anyways, I thought of that as I was reading this article by David Brooks HERE.

But the most striking feature of the show was its tone of self-effacement and humility. The allies had, on that very day, completed one of the noblest military victories in the history of humanity. And yet there was no chest-beating. Nobody was erecting triumphal arches.

Burgess Meredith came out to read a passage from Ernie Pyle, the famous war correspondent. Pyle had been killed just a few months before, but he had written an article anticipating what a victory would mean:

“We won this war because our men are brave and because of many things — because of Russia, England and China and the passage of time and the gift of nature’s material. We did not win it because destiny created us better than all other peoples. I hope that in victory we are more grateful than we are proud.”

Today, immodesty is as ubiquitous as advertising, and for the same reasons. To scoop up just a few examples of self-indulgent expression from the past few days, there is Joe Wilson using the House floor as his own private “Crossfire”; there is Kanye West grabbing the microphone from Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards to give us his opinion that the wrong person won; there is Michael Jordan’s egomaniacal and self-indulgent Hall of Fame speech. Baseball and football games are now so routinely interrupted by self-celebration, you don’t even notice it anymore.

It’s funny how the nation’s mood was at its most humble when its actual achievements were at their most extraordinary.

I was gonna post the famous flightsuit "Mission Accomplished" photo here, but is that even necessary?