Nostalgia is memory with the pain removed, and conservativism is the political utopia of this nostalgia. As we get older, we get more nostalgic. We sort of realize that things that seemed ragged and scarred as we lived them are smoothed over by time, wearing down the jagged edges as they nestle into the contours of the past. Like glorious scenery; like a beautiful landscape painting.

Peggy Noonan’s writing is deeply nostalgic. She reminds us of a time when the public and the private were less messily intertwined; when elegance was not scorned, and masculinity not decried. When greatness existed in the form of monumental men and women of character. Character is not the absence of flaws; it is the ability to do storied things despite them. Her columns are full of them: from Ronald Reagan to Margaret Thatcher and onward to Tim Russert and Tennessee Williams and on.

Character worship.

These are not the days of character. Character requires sacrifice and selflessness. But it also requires restraint. The people in Peggy’s writing are deeply flawed humans. Some drank to excess on occasions; were unfaithful to their wives (or husbands); struggled with addiction, debt, or rage. They doubted their faith, in the presence of a good God who is in charge of all things. The difference is those flaws they tucked away carefully from prying eyes, only occasionally having them leak out through a mistake or the persistence of the press. They were the private struggles of imperfect people, struggles that made those people better by having overcome them to lead heroic lives. Today those flaws are flaunted, put on display proudly through social media and in parades and during talk shows. They are glorified in our movies, which no longer seek out and encourage greatness but instead, as Peggy wrote, “Our movie culture has descended into immaturity, deep and inhuman violence, a pervasive and flattened sexuality.”

There’s also something remarkable about Peggy’s writing, and it is her ability to look up to people. Being able to admire somebody else requires tremendous personal confidence. It means we have to be comfortable with who we are, and our place in our world around us. Our society has made us all deeply unsatisfied with our ‘lot in life’ – the very idea itself eliciting scorn. Our belief in inherent equality has led us to jealousy of those more powerful and envy of those who have more. And social media has flattened our ancient hierarchies, taking our petty feuds national and giving us the impression that we can be more influential than we are destined to be. We hurl insults directly at the president (through twitter), we seek that coveted status of ‘influencer’, and we drag people down to our level and decapitate our heroes to prove that we are just as good as they are; and then we recoil in horror at the headless monsters running amok around us. Peggy is comfortable, and therefore can say “This is an extraordinary mind” and “That is a remarkable talent” without ever believing that fact diminishes her in any way, which is why reading her columns is often inspiring. And we need inspiration, for these are not inspiring days.

I am grateful for Peggy, for the reminder of what America used to behave like – even if reading her columns is sort of like leaping into a Bing Crosby movie. There’s something comfortable about nostalgia, because it is changelessness. They can knock down our statues; they can rewrite our laws; but try as they might they can never un-film “White Christmas”. And that is important, especially in troubled times.