It is fashionable to sneer at nostalgia as if every fond memory were a fraud. But remembering what was good is not denial, it is how we keep from excusing the people who tore good things up.
Nostalgia Is Not a Lie |
It is common nowadays to sneer at nostalgia as if every fond memory must have an asterisk next to it. But remembering what was good is important. It is how we keep from excusing the people who tore good things up. |
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News for the America we remember |
These days, if you say something used to be better, somebody will hurry over to inform you that the past was complicated. This is delivered as though it were fresh intelligence from the front. Of course the past was complicated. So is the present, and likely the future too. Human beings have had a knack for mixing blessings and blunders in every era they have ever touched. But there is a special kind of modern smugness that treats nostalgia as a moral defect, as though any affection for the old days must be based on ignorance, sentimentality, or a refusal to face history. |
That is too easy, and it lets too many people off the hook. |
There were things wrong in the old America. Serious things. Any grown person knows that. Families carried burdens quietly. Some opportunities were denied unfairly. Some towns were harsher than they should have been. Some authority was abused. There is no point polishing history until you can see your own vanity in it. But honesty runs in two directions. If we are required to remember what was broken, we are also obliged to remember what was sound. |
What was sound? Trust, for one thing. |
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The most controversial market event in Wall Street history is about to happen sponsored |
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