high-minded

It was once the job of “sleazy” tabloids to destroy lives with lurid gossip that titillated the public but lacked public interest in the high-minded sense.

While the work of their Attic cousins is celebrated for being high-minded and idealistic—all those ripped bodies, gods and goddesses—theirs, with its focus on everyday individuals and events, can be seen as prosaic.

Democrats show no such concern, in part because they have honed the art of casting nakedly political prosecutions as high-minded civic virtue, clapped on by media and institutional elites.

Any other presidential decision would have been criminal: That is basic democratic morality, notwithstanding unceasing criticism from the high-minded.

It threatens to drown out their own more high-minded projects.