Nostalgia Can Be a Force for Good

In “The Dangers of the Politics of Nostalgia,” Karlyn Bowman and Samantha Goldstein take issue with “the enduring belief that things were better or that our circumstances were happier in the past.” While “Americans are persistently anxious about their institutions and their ideals because they care deeply about both,” they concede in their essay for National Review, “overemphasizing the past can also clash with Americans’ forward-looking and optimistic spirit.” The writers conclude:

There are, however, forms of (and uses for) political nostalgia that differ from the kind described by Bowman and Goldstein. In the 1964 New York Times Magazine essay the writers cite, Kristol attacked “the politics of nostalgia” as “at best distracting, at worst, pernicious.” In the context of Goldwater’s failed campaign, he argued that “the spectacle of used-car dealers campaigning to re-establish the horse-and-buggy era stretched the limits of political credulity beyond the breaking point.” But even that kind of reactionary romanticism has its place. Contrary to what Bowman and Goldstein imply, a reverence for the past creates a fiduciary responsibility to the future — a sense of patriotic commitment that can come only from a culture vividly aware of its heritage, or what Burke described as the link between the dead, the living, and the yet to be born.

About the Author

Nate Hochman

Nate Hochman was a staff writer at National Review.

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In “The Dangers of the Politics of Nostalgia,” Karlyn Bowman and Samantha Goldstein take issue with “the enduring belief that things were better or that our circumstances were happier in the past.” While “Americans are persistently anxious about their institutions and their ideals because they care deeply about both,” they concede in their essay for National Review, “overemphasizing the past can also clash with Americans’ forward-looking and optimistic spirit.” The writers conclude:

There are, however, forms of (and uses for) political nostalgia that differ from the kind described by Bowman and Goldstein. In the 1964 New York Times Magazine essay the writers cite, Kristol attacked “the politics of nostalgia” as “at best distracting, at worst, pernicious.” In the context of Goldwater’s failed campaign, he argued that “the spectacle of used-car dealers campaigning to re-establish the horse-and-buggy era stretched the limits of political credulity beyond the breaking point.” But even that kind of reactionary romanticism has its place. Contrary to what Bowman and Goldstein imply, a reverence for the past creates a fiduciary responsibility to the future — a sense of patriotic commitment that can come only from a culture vividly aware of its heritage, or what Burke described as the link between the dead, the living, and the yet to be born.