Love keeps great nations going

Peggy Noonan is old enough to remember a better America:

I feel that almost everyone who talks about America for a living—politicians and journalists and even historians—is missing a huge and essential story: that too many things are happening that are making a lot of Americans feel a new distance from, a frayed affiliation with, the country they have loved for half a century and more, the country they loved without every having to think about it, so natural was it. This isn't the kind of thing that can be quantified in polls—it's barely the kind of thing people admit to themselves. But talk to older Americans—they feel they barely know this country anymore..... And if you think this does not carry implications for down the road, for our healthy continuance as a nation, you are mistaken. Love keeps great nations going.

Ms Noonan has always been worth reading, but never more than in these days when the IRS plays politics, the State Department abandons diplomats under attack, and the NSA rummages through our emails and the phone records of reporters..