From 2005:
It’s no place for the flippant–Arlington has a way of making the overheard remarks of ironically inclined visitors sound shameful–but it has much to offer the aesthete, even the soul-deadened kind to whom patriotism is no more than gold-braided bigotry. The simple marble headstones that mark most of the graves are at once ruthlessly functional and timelessly handsome, both individually and en masse, just as the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns is all but balletic in its poised, precise clarity. Next to such pure classicism, the bronze plaque that honors the astronauts who died in the Challenger explosion seems almost sentimental, as much a symbol of its times as the marble tablets are of theirs….
Read the whole thing here.