As a former speechwriter for President Reagan, Noonan used her Notre Dame address to redefine conservatism for a new era. Rather than presenting it as opposition to progressivism, she described it as something independent and self-sustaining — a philosophical disposition rooted in historical wisdom rather than political reactionism. She connected this to Edmund Burke's vision of an unseen compact between the living, the dead, and the unborn, and Margaret Thatcher's more blunt formulation that 'the facts of life are conservative.' Noonan argued that conservatives were still trying to define their philosophy, which she saw as evidence of its vitality rather than its weakness.