Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth Yuval Levin 20240712

Much of this moment and forces us to confront challenges that our society has had trouble with in recent years, this is a time that makes us wonder how stronger institution will prove to be, how we will rise to a challenge i and i think i cant help but see it as a time of a crisis but because it is a time of testing at the time to think about what americas strengths are, what were good at as a country how we can build on that to address the innermost problems. How did we get here . Thats an awfully complicated question. Our country has always tried to strike a balance between the dignity and equality in the individual one hand and some form of strength of community on the other, every free Society Faces the tension in our society has in the past halfcentury emphasize individual, emphasize liberty and emphasize freedom and diversity and that has brought enormous advantages and benefits but there is another side to that coin and the other side can look Like Division and fragmentation and isolation. It can look like alienation and loneliness and i think we seen all of that in the 21st century. This is been air thats been marked by crises from 9 11 at the beginning to the financial crisis to now, pandemic that has forced us to look through the sources of her strength in ways that have to oneway drive us to think about our history and the other should push us to look to the future which is politics is not always good at doing. For somebody like me who tries to work at the intersection of political theory and Public Policy, theory and practice around politics, this is the time to think about fundamentals and to look for ways to draw strength from whats been good about our country to address the problems that it has an very much lives one. Host yuval, in your book the fractured republic, you talk about the norm, have we ever had a norm, what you consider to be the norm in this country. Guest thats a very important question, we live in a time that has Something Like a misperception of the norm, were living in a moment that culturally is very dominated by the baby boomers, the generation of people born between 1946 in the early 1960s, these are still today although there often in their 70s and 60s people who are running our Core Institutions in interNational Politics, President Trump who is born 74 years ago this month in june of 1946, president george w. Bush was born in july of 1946 and bill clinton was born in august of 1946. Barack obama was born in 1961, they are all boomers in the life extremes that they have had has been a pretty unusual version of america in america that came out of the second world war. Unified and having achieve something great by coming together mobilization, a country with enormous confidence in its institution, government and big business and big labor and Big Government working together to solve problems and over the course of the 50, 60 years since that hike, we have lived through fragmentation and diversification, i think a lot has been good particular for people on the margin over society, minority of various types and people who are alienated. It also meant that we have lost the solidarity and define postal america. A lot of our politics now is defined by a sense of law about that. Defined by the sense that the era of the baby boomer childhood was the norm and we fallen from that, that era was not the norm and if you look down america any point in the 19th century, youd find a divided society with little confidence in the institution dealing with some economic and cultural forces what were seeing now, mass immigration, industrialization, urbanization, our country has a lot of resources to draw and thinking about how to deal with a moment like this, it is important to not misperceive the norm, 1950s, early 60s america was a very unusual form of our society and we should not take it to be the norm in some ways were stuck in the place regurgitating in reiterating what the boomers did when they were young. Host should be ideal . Guest no, i dont think so, our ideals are not about one particular moment in history. Our ideals should be about Core Principles, how we treat each other, i think theyre written in the declaration of independence. The core fundamental beliefs that we are all created equal, or government begins from the premise and as a result we have freedom with individuals and we are a strong united society, those Core Principles along with ideals that are laid out as forms of government institutional design in our constitution can provide us with what we need to live through very different kinds of challenges and times. Those kinds of ideals are what we should look to in a moment like this, our politics cannot be organized with returning to golden age, that age was not as golden as people think it was, for Many Americans it was far from that and in any case history does not go backwards our question now should be how do we become strong for the future intermediate conservative that means reisinger principles and seeing how we can apply to the changing circumstances. Thats what our politics should be striving to do and that means coming to terms with the circumstances, understanding our country as it is and thinking how can we be our best selves in this time, not how can we return to a golden age, the left and the right both engage in nostalgia that gets in a way of a construction politics. Host i want to read a little bit from your book, the fractured republic which came on 2016, life in america is always Getting Better and worse at the same time. Liberals and conservatives, both frequently insist not only that the path to the america of their dreams is easy to see but also that our country was once on the very path and is been thrown off course by the foolishness or wickedness of those on the other side of the aisle, the broader public meanwhile finds in the resulting political debate little evidence of real engagement from content Group Problems and few attractive solutions. Guest that is a description of my frustration with the basic dynamics of contemporary politics. I think you do see him both parties, theres a way in which Republican Party urines for the social arrangement in the 1950s an early 60s, the democrats for that time. We went through a period of liberalization that open up opportunities for people had been at the margins of our society and also created options and choices in economic diamond is him in ways that we have benefited enormously. They did come at a cost and thinking how we address the co cost, we cannot just think about how we go back to an earlier social order, that is not what conservatives ought to do. The question is how do we apply to a new situation and i think we spent too much of her time thinking about whose fault it is that we fell from height rather than thinking about how do we prepare for the future, our Politics Today has little to say about the future. We dont talk much about what america is going to need in 2040, that sounds impossibly far away, 20 years from now close to us as the year 2000 and is exactly what we should think about and our politics. I think there is a need to get ourselves out of the rut of the nostalgia for mid Century America and think think as conservatives and progressives of the left and right in general and what we want for the future what we need to build to get there. Host yuval levin you identify yourself as a conservative, what does that mean to you . Guest i am a conservative, my work has been about the question of what that means or what the left right divide in american politics and the politics of free society is really about. It begins with basic emesis almost from anthropology. My conservatism starts from the sense that human beings are born less then perfect, theyre born falling, broken, twisted and we need to be formed before we can be free, that formation is done by the Core Institutions of our society, by family and community, by religion, education, ultimately by politics and culture and those institutions that are capable of that formation to be valued and treasured and conserved, they proven themselves over time to be capable of providing generations of people with what we need to be a free society and because abby and from the premise thats difficult to do, that formation is essential and difficult, i want to conserve the institutions that are capable of it, people who describe themselves as progressive at their best begin from a different premise than the premise that we are born free but a lot of people are not free and not living up to their potential because are being oppressed by institutions that impose on them an oppressive status quo, there is truth to both of these, which you choose to emphasize runs very deep in your character and your sense of what politics is about, free society does need them both but it seems to me the conservative view offers what Society Needs both is how social order can enable justice. Im a conservative. Host in your most recent book which just came out this year, a time to build, our souls in our institution shape each other in the ongoing way. When they are forging our institutions make us more decent and responsible. But when they are flogging integrated, our institutions failed to inform us, or they do form is to be cynical, selfindulgent or reckless, reinforcing the devices on the mind of free society. Guest that book is really about the nature of the social crisis that we are living through, the previous book recorded from before tries to think in broad terms about the social dynamic, the history that led us to the polarization were living in our society and the newer book, a time to build thinks about the institutional underpinnings of the social crisis were living through, the crisis that we know to be a social crisis, how we connect and how we understand ourselves as individuals to be parts of a larger whole and the crisis of alienation and not only Political Polarization but the private lives of many people and desperation that leaves people to opioid, and enormous increase in suicide rate over recent years and i argue a lot has to do with the weakening of our institution in particular with a sense of a lot of people in those institutions and the purpose of the institution is not to form them, not to mold them both serve as a platform for them to stand on and be seen and build their own brand or elevate themselves, i think theres a been a deep formation over Core Institutions from politics to the profession to the media to the academy where a lot of people think of the institutions they are part of as existing in platforms for themselves rather than a mold of our character in her behavior and some recovery of what it means to be part of an institution to be shaped by an institution and its very important to the recovery of our life. We see that powerfully in politics which is becomes open performative or people run for congress to get a bigger social media following into get a better timeslot on cable news rather than to think about working in an institution to change your country for the better. Host you right in a time to build that weve seen a powerful additional source of dysfunction which takes us deeper toward the core of congress institutional confusion, simply put many members of congress have come to understand themselves and most fundamentally as players in a larger cultural ecosystem and the point of which is not legislating or governing but whether a performance outrage for partisan audience, you specify or you mention matt gaetz, republican of florida and alexandria are causing a test has two people who represent this. Guest i use those as examples but the problem is much more widespread than that, we come to a place where we think of the Political Institution as platforms for cultural performances. As they say people run for congress to get a blue checkmark next to the name on twitter, more than to enact legislation, theyre trying to do good and improve our society but they see the world the politics can play is fundamentally a platform role to put themselves in a place where they can channel the outrage of the voters who got them there, they can perform and stand as outsiders in, about Congress Rather than insiders. Obviously thats happened in the presidency as well, President Trump is impolite that more than any other president the house. The sense of the presidency is a stage and a place to perform and the president sees himself as an outsider and he spent a lot of time talking about the government, complaining on twitter that the department of justice says rather than understanding as ultimate insider with the responsibility that is defined by the role he plays, that book argues to recover something of a functional institutionalism we have to ask yourself the question that we dont ask anymore in our politics, given my role, how should i behave, goes well beyond politics, as a member of congress, how should i hate behave, as a employee, pastor, congregant, neighbor, given that how should i behave, thats a way of letting her institutional role form and shape the way that we behave in society in ways that might drive us toward greater responsibility and a greater sense of obligation rather than just thinking of ourselves of standing alone on a platform and acting out a cultural enrage in the logic is taken over the Core Institutions and i think we need to push back against that. Host technology has played a role in todays protocol world . Guest i think technology serves the role that we wanted to. I think the forces he ran deeper than technology, were not just the whim of social media or the internet, we use them in these ways because thats what were looking for. The larger social cross that we lived there has been a function of liberalization diversification, in the america we were talking about before in the middle the 20th century, many of the great social forces in our country were telling people to be more like everyone else, they were forces of conformity and that is very constricting. In our time those same social forces are telling everyone to be ourselves, forces of individual liberation, theres a lot of good to that but it can tear society apart and we have to find a balance and push against the places that we tend to lean too hard, right now recovering solidarity and how we think about our society. Host i want to bring your book to great debate in our conversation as well, i want to start by reading this quote, the political left and right often seemed to represent genuinely distinct point of View International life seems almost by design to bring to the surface questions that divide them, how do we become a country of the political left and right. Guest thats a subject of the book, it is a work of intellectual history, its a book that began a my visitation at the university of chicago and over a period of years developed into a general book in a trace to look at the origins of the left right to bide and its been a subject more broadly. It does that by looking through the lens of the late 18th century debate between edmund burke and thomas paine. Edmund burke, the great irish born english politician sought to be one of the fathers of modern conservatism, thomas paine, an english born American Revolutionary war figure became a very important figure in making the case for the french love revolution. And they engage with each other, they had an argument with the nature of social change in the argument encapsulate a lot over time what would become the core distinction between the left and right in politics. It begins in some respects as beginning from a different of anthropology, just how it is that the human being enters the world and what we require in order to thrive and flourish and be free, both of these views are generally speaking liberal views, they be wrong in the free society and they believe in democracy and individual liberty, they believe in protecting the equal rights of all but they differ fundamentally, what the free society really is because they differ about the nature of the human person and i think that debate which is the debate on how to advance the good is still the right way to understand the left right debate in our politics. The left and the right are not factions in the sense each speaks their own goods, the parties that are divided by a difference of opinion of what would be good for everyone in society at large, that difference is a constructive difference and i think partisan politics can be very ugly and very divisive in our countrys life and is necessary in its way of framing and formulating the debates about the countries good and i think it still serves this way in the differences between left and right there were evidence in the 18th century in many ways still relevant that is what politics is about. What is your background that you came to this point of view. Guest im an immigrant to the United States and was born in israel, my family came to the u. S. When i was eight years old, a. , a mostly in new jersey and i went to college in washington, d. C. In American University and worked on capitol hill and i went to graduate at the university of chicago and came back to work in the bush administration. First the department of health and Human Services and the bush white house, i was a policy staffer and president george w. Bush second term. Then i went where my work has been at the intersection of what my Academic Work was about which is political theory and philosophy and what my work in Public Policy has been about which is political practice. Im now a scholar at the American Enterprise institute and iran a quarterly journal called National Affairs which is started in 2009 and in some ways i try to connect theory and practice in politics to help each should light on the other and how i came to my conservative views, for me as most people that is a mystery, some of it has to do with influences around me growing up, im sure my father is a conservative but also ultimately reaches to some mysterious level that we never fully understand and how we come to have the fundamental views that we have as often a little bit mysterious. I am impressed by institutions that enable people to thrive and that means im very impressed by the American Social order in the american constitutional system and i think we can draw a lot out of her history to help us with the problems we confronted. Im a conservative. Host what are the nonnegotiables in our social compact. Guest those are stated in the declaration of independence. We believe in human quality and dignity, thats why people are on the street, we saw in video a gross violation and abuse of a human person who ought to be treated as equal and was not, that is a nonnegotiable fact about americans, whatever our political inclination and we can differ a lot, we all believe that we are all created equal and were all endowed with basic rights and government exist to protect the rights and i think from there on we have allotted debate, how should government protect those rights, which are institutions look like, what would be most effective. The basic ideals written in the charter of our society are the nonnegotiables of american politics. I think they are true. Host good afternoon, and welcome to book tv on cspan2, this is our monthly indent program, we missed you the last couple of months and were glad to be live di live again with ad scholar yuval levin, he is the author of five books beginning with purity of reason which came out into thousand one, imagining the future, 2008, the great debate which we have discussed came on 2013, the fractured republic, renewing americas contract in the age of individualism came on 2017 and finally his newest book, the time to build from family and community to congress in the campus, how recommitting to institutions can revive the american dream, we wanted to participate in our conversation this afternoon, there several ways of doing that, we will be getting with phone numbers, 202 7488200, for those of you living in the east and central time zone you can dial in if you have a question or comment 202 7488201, for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones, you can also text in a question or comment, please include your first name and the city and state that you live in so we can get that context, 202 7488903. We also have all of our social media sites, instagram, facebook, twitter, booktv is or handle, we will begin taking those calls in just a few minutes. Doctor lynn, back to the great bait, what has been the lasting effect in th france and this country. Guest it was one of those core ethical moments in the history of the west and its effectively been absolutely and or miss. It unleashed the modern wave of revolution for good and bad and it created the frame, the shape of modern radicalism that ended up shaping 19th century politics and in many ways is still with us. Its important to see it is not where modern liberalist was born. The liberal society broadly understood, i dont mean liberal as the left but liberal in our way of life really began in the United Kingdom well before the french revolution and important to remember that the American Revolution happened before the french revolution not after. I think of the American Revolution as a great turning point in human history, the free society thats made possible the achievement of the dreams of liberalism. But after the french revolution, the politics of every subsequent tree society and the politics of our society has been divided over a question of social change, how do we change, change by building on the pastor breaking with the past. That basic question, and a lot of ways is a distinction between left and right when you come down to it became the defining organizing question of the politics of not only france but britain and the United States and the democratizing countries in europe afterward and essentially every free society today. So before the french revolution coming look english politics and you find parties that are divided over the question of whether its a crown or parliament that should have power, that was changed by then by the end of the 18th century but after the french revolution, the question that divided left and right was the question of the french revolution. The question of whether the purpose of the politics is an ongoing constant revolutionary process that ultimately will liberate us entirely from the burden of the past or whether the purpose of our politics is a gradual change that keeps us connected to the roots of western civilization and enables us to make the most of our inheritance. The former view is a progressive view and the latter is a conservative in the french revolution has a normal smock to do with why thats the nature of the debate that we have, is a hugely consequential and in many ways continues to be. Host sense with your descriptions of edmund burke and thomas paine, burke is impatient gradual reformer and thomas paine as an upper router. Guest exactly. Edmund burke was a wig, he was not a theory, he came from the reforming party of english politics but the fundamental disposition was gradual reform and reform is not revolution, its almost offered in opposition to revolution and it says we need to change gradually so we dont lose what we built up what works and we can change what does not work. Pain had much less patience for that change. He said the status quo is unjust and we need to overturn and start over, we know the principles with free politics, lets throw out what we got which came from an age of oppression and start over in a right way, he was a much more radical revolutionary in both the views are contained within the American Revolution and the American Revolution was taking conservative and radical revolution and you can see it in the declaration of independence which begins by stating radical principles but then goes on to state that prudence demand, you dont just overthrow government for shallow reasons, goes on to list the reasons, those are very conservative reasons, they have been denied their rights as englishmen, they have been denied recourse to the institution that has long been theirs and unlike the french is purely radical, the American Revolution was a conservative and progressive revolution and contain the entire framework of the politics that would become ours. If you live in the east and central time zone 202 7488201, for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones yuval levin, your first call comes from elizabeth in secret new jersey, hi elizabeth. Call hello, how are you. Host just fine maam, go ahead with your question. Call how does he explain the disconnect and complicity of conservatives in the senate and the congress and how did they go along with the immoral and selfserving and self absorbed dictator like the president. Things are not adding up, just wondering what he would say about that. Guest im a conservative thats pretty cool donald trump, i dont think he is fit for the purpose and entity, i dont think it was my choice and i dont think youve done well by her country. With that said, i think the fact that our politics is polarized as it is is an important part of the reason why so many republicans in our politics have stuck by trump even though hes done things that they very lis e should disapprove of, i dont think is a conservative and i dont think is advanced the worldview that conservatives who want to see advance in our politics but we reached a point where each party too often defined the other party as a countrys biggest problem rather than thinking about the real challenges, we think of one another of the core problems to be dealt with. That intense partisanship means ultimately you prefer your own party over Everything Else and isaac republicans found ways to rationalize and justify too much of what the president has done into unwilling to criticize him, i would not criticize everything he has done, hes appointing good judges and when it comes to Regulatory Reform and other things hes done well but generally speaking in this question of character is absolutely essential in executive leadership, our president should be people of character, im enormously critical President Trump and i think more republicans out of the. Host your former boss that was reported in the new york times, may be supporting joe biden. Guest i think that is unclear, he has not said who he is supporting exactly. I think george bush and the policies he pursued and i like the policies he pursued his amana character, i got to see him in action when i worked at the white house and what struck me most in the time is that he lived always with the weight of responsibility of the presidency on his shoulders, he news his decisions mattered and a lot depended on them and they had to be taken seriously, he owed it to the country to approach his job with the gravity that it required and that is clearly lacking in this presidency. Host back to the great debate, politics is a negotiation of the principal differences in response to particular needs and events. Party politics should not be looked down upon as unseemly thomas burke argues, on the contrary is the memes by wellintentioned politicians join together as honorable patriots. Guest edward burke is very interesting, hes one of the few people that make a positive case for parties. Theres ways been a pragmatic case for parties, their necessary to organize our politics but very few people have actually made an explicit almost philosophical case for the need for parties in a free society. Actually Thomas Jefferson is another and they wouldve found themselves in different parties, but both saw the ultimately what parties enable us to do is form broad coalition. We think of parties now is fundamentally divisive as breaking us down into fraction but in fact parties have a strong sense of broad not narrow coalition. If youre the democratic party, you have to run a candidate in alabama and in oregon, you have to build a pretty broad tent, through the Republican Party need to do the same yet to find ways to appeal to people in broad terms in different circumstances in different situations. Thats a healthy force in our politics, if forces compromise in this forces cooperation. The institutions that we require in a free society are ones that force us and compel us to accommodate each other, its why congress is essential Core Institution of her constitutional system because congress exist to compel accommodation. There will be fundamental differences in our politics, people will disagree, that is never going away, the question is how do we handle and how do we live with it. The answer in the free society is compromised and so you want institutions that force you into the tent that require you to compromise to achieve anything and i do think burke is right, parties belong on the list of the institutions. Lynwood is calling in from maryland. Caller i am off my question by what is been said in the first call invite mr. Live in. The first call is a dictator, if all the people who justified were right about politics, absolutely right, they did not have the right to say to the president that you must follow me because i am right, that is stupidity and adds to character. Not long ago called put in the waters, he talks about the guy who organized martial washington, the main guy not the philosophical guy, they said about him we gotta happen, we better watch him seeing that he dont grab the little boy, we better watch him, i am not into character and trump coming to my house. And the best lawyer in the United States drunk or sober. Trump is not following the constitutions and not violating any law and anything and if he curses, that is fine with me. Host we are going to leave it there, yuval levin, little bit about political character. Guest it is important to say that donald trump is not a dictator, hes elected president of the United States, have a lot of problems always governed and i disagree with some things and i dont think he has a character to be your president but he is our president , he was elected and he was not violated the constitution at least not no any obvious way that i can see, there are debates about the things hes done in those debates in the courts and so for the objection that i do have i think the argument that you hear the hes authoritarian or dictator are not real founded, if anything donald trump is a weak president who is not use the powers of the presidency in ways that he might have in the Public Health crisis that we live through this year and other circumstances. And i raise before some objections and i got many more but i dont think is a dictator by any means and that word should not be thrown around. Host patrick is calling in from minnesota, the suburb of minneapolis. Caller good morning, excellent conversation, i have never read any of mr. Levine book. Its extremely relevant now, then and forever. My question was in reference to inequality which seems to be the word that the protesters are using in the advance of maybe one side in the past ten years since trump is been elected. Has a Great Society done us an injustice and not making us great when we inaugurated this in the late 60s in when we address the subject matter once before. And how we water down the expectations of Public Schools that has shortchanged the generations in order to compete . Host before we get an answer from yuval levin, what is the last couple of weeks that life is been for you, your 20 miles from downtown las minneapolis. Caller thats a privilege community, its off highway 12 on the outskirts of minneapolis, im originally from wisconsin and moved here 35 years ago i went to Community College and it really got to high school, minnesota gave me a chance, i flourished in school later in life graduated ten years later and have contributed to the community and have grown with it. This is been a real disappointing time to see this fall in front of me. Im in my mid50s, i got off to a late start but i really care about the future and have a good strong history from the past in a volunteer and all the communities locally in their work with addiction specifically that has suffered from the covid crisis. But this is been a very challenging time, i was fearful for the first time that it would not in. Host a recent headline in the new york times, how minneapolis, one of americas most liberal cities struggles with racism. Caller is it a product of these policies that have not worked, im not saying a heavyhanded better but are there options that we have not explored in the characters that mr. Levine has brought up in regard to the possible selfishness of groups and individual thought processes in the devout me now in my market instead of collectively our community and our state. Host thank you. Lets bring yuval levin into this, thank you for spending a few minutes with us book to be. Guest i thank you for that and for all that you do, its people like you that make this country great. And its ultimately not engagement and concern and involvement in local communities that can strengthen our society. I think first of all on the question of the Great Society it was many things, on the one hand a set of large Public Programs that were intended to create a new kind of social safety net in our society and some of been effective in some less so and were pain in enormous price financially and fiscally ways that will show us how they were structured like Medicare Medicaid and in that sense we have been left with a tremendous bill to pay that is a burden on the future even if these programs have done a great deal that they could. I Great Society was a social vision and connected in our minds and connected in reality to the civil rights revolution in some ways that the civil rights bills preceded the Great Society, the key ones of the 1960s and 64 and 65 came before the Great Society, i think those bills happen largely successfully, even as we live through moment where we see how much remains to do on the civil rights front and on the question of basic human equality in our society and the struggle against racism, we should still see that Real Progress has been made over the years and the kinds of problems that we deal with now are not of the same skill and character that the Civil Rights Movement contended with in let alone what we saw in prior decades and centuries in our society, a lot of work remains to be done but we live in time for the Murders Police officer who killed george floyd in minneapolis was violating the law and will be tried for murder, there was a time when the law wouldve been behind the cop and when our society simply would not have valued the lives of black americans in the ways that now are laws do sort people well. Congress has been made and i would not say thats been a failure but ultimately the progress that needs to be made is moral progress which is not the same thing as social progress, moral progress has to be made in every human heart, this is the reason why im a conservative, i think ultimately the problems are rooted in the human heart and rooted in imperfection of the human person and we need to be formed and educated and vshaped to be moral people, we require engagement with the moral ideals that can give us the right kind of form to be free people to respect each other and acknowledge each others court dignity and thats work that has to be done in every generation previous not going to end, there are ways that we can change social institution and social structures to make that work easier and to treat people equally under the law, i think we made a lot of progress on that front but there will always be a need for us to put before the rising generation the Core Principles in the core ideals of western civilization in american society, that job simply will never end and theres no way around it. The fundamental work of forming free people is a work of every generation on behalf of the one that follows it. Host what your take on minneapolis, very progressive city that prides itself on minnesota nice and high morals, this is not the first highprofile incident in that city. Guest. Caller to basic social ad moral problems, there are rises everywhere and in some ways i think there is a way in which the power of the police union and other structural institutional factors make it very difficult for the Police Department in a place and minneapolis to enforce its own rules and to make sure its officers treat the public with respect to dignity so when these problems arise they can be more difficult to deal with in a liberal policy in some ways, not every way, i just think we should be ready to deal with evil anywhere, it is not a function of politics in a simple sense, these things happen, we should be glad that they happen less than the you used to but we should not accept that they will always happen, we should deal with them and make sure we are engaged with one another as citizens in the institutions are formed around the core commitment to the quality of every person regardless of race in anything and that is work that will have to be done in conservative, i dont think politics gets us out of it. Host a time to build from family and community to congress in the campus, how recommitting for institutions can revive the american dream, stuart in seattle, you are on with author yuval levin. Caller good morning to both of you. I would like to know how i as a nontrump supporter but more on the side of burke than i am on the side of pain when i was younger i was on the side of pain that take as a older person i appreciate burke. How do i talk to people who are not Trump Supporters that seem to be resistant to compromise and absolutely opposed to a common cause unless youre totally on that team, the partisanship has seems to got out of hand. Guest i agree with you, i think in both parties unwillingness to compromise is now the core problem of our political life, it is not the fact that theres a left and right and theres factions within left and right, that we may like or not like, its the fact that theyre not willing to see each other as conversation partners and as partners in compromise. The life for a free society is compromise. What polarization is really meant in the politics of the 20th century, is a loss of the sense ultimately compromises only way that our politics will function, its happened for variety of reasons, one of the reasons is the fact that we have not had a majority or Minority Party in our politics and some time. When you look in american political history, Political Science use the terms the sun party and the moon party, most times in our politics there is a strong party and it might be the democrats or the republicans are the weeks before them or others. And not strong party rains for time and theres a Minority Party but it functions as a Minority Party enforces compromise and uses leverage at the margin work can and then things change and theres a political realignment in the minority becomes a majority and you go through. Like that, we have lived since about the middle the 1990s in a period where powershare backandforth and we do not have a party that we can say is the Majority Party of the country or the Minority Party of the country, one of the things that that means, each party always thinks he can win everything at the next election and it cannot. Every new president that came into office since 1992 has come in with controlled both houses of congress, with his own party, that means parties are shift back and forth in each partys right to imagine if we wait this out then after the next election it can control everything and push things in his own direction. When that happens those majorities are never very big and never strong and you dont get very much done in the sure willing to compromise. The major legislation that we have seen in the century has tended to be quite partisan and tended not to endure and have a lot of trouble being sustained as we see power change. I think thats taking away some of the incentive that each party might have to deal with the other. At the end of the days ability just means acknowledging the people you disagree with, they will still be there tomorrow and the political dynamic are such that you might imagine that they will not be, another election and we went in all and wherever we might be. I think helping people see that ultimately political progress only happens in whatever direction you care about my compromise with people that you disagree with is to advance these conversations. Sometimes that means working at the local level or the state level where we still do have real compromise happening, i live in the state of maryland where we have a republican governor with a Progressive Democratic legislator and they Work Together because they have to, at a practical level there is no other way, i think that recognition is more on the surface at the state level in the local level and it means that we should channel more power to the state level and local level where problems can get resolved in a constructive way at least in National Politics recaptures the proper form. Host if you cannot get through on the phone line send us a text or social media, the text number and ill carefully 202 7488903, include your first name and city if you would and larry and st. Petersburg florida text in, what can individual do to make politics better. Thank you for the question it is really the question of course. Its a question i try to take up in the latest book that we talk about the time to build. It has to begin where we are and institutions that we are each part of, those might be Community Institutions or cervical or educational or Political Institutions of her own community or National Politics, we have to ask ourselves, how we can Work Together with others to advance to a common goal and ask ourselves, given the institutional responsibility i have, how can i do better. That small question is the path toward larger reform, the book lays out larger reform which is necessary reform of congress, the party system, necessary reform in the academy in the professional world, the book talks about the media and civic life of before any of these reforms can happen, people within our institutions have to recognize that we are part of the problem and that means we first of all have to see that all of us are subject to the tendency to think of her institutional responsibilities as optional and to think of her institutions or platforms for ourselves and taken us beyond that misimpression and helping ourselves be a force for good is the beginning of change, is not an alternative or substitute, its an essential prerequisite. Host one of the big other institutions that you tackle and a time to build his Education System both higher and lower and post on our Facebook Page this comment are educational institutions are failing to educate our children for a prosperous future and worse, dividing the country as progressives have shaped a electrical that teaches our children that we are country dominated by injustice, these include the kids who are on the street now. Guest i think this raises a very important point. Especially the k12 primary and secondary schooling is enormously decentralized, it is a system more control over curriculum is generally held at the local level and were different places can do very Different Things and i think thats okay, to live with diversity and make the most of it. There are places where ideas will be talked about in there i places where ideas will be taught that i like and many other people dont, thats just what happens in america. I think the point that she gets to about how to teacher history is enormously important, im very concerned that a version of her history that denies as recourse to the best in the history is now being pushed on a lot of children and a lot of College Students, any history of American Life would have to take very seriously and fully the history of racial oppression in our society which is as old as the history of our society and essential to understanding it. It would also teach the struggle against racial aggression which is also as old as our society and offers us a lot to work with. In trying to do better as a country. It is not the case that the american story is simply a story of failure on this front and to deny students access to the model and example of Frederick Douglass or Abraham Lincoln or Harriet Tubman or Martin Luther king is a tremendous failure of responsibility, we have to teach the good with the bad and offer a full picture and that full picture offers of rising generation a huge amount to work with in making our country better from the core ideas and principles from a quality that had been the ideas of our society of course we have not lived up to them to people who devoted their lives to that struggle and ways we can learn from and be inspired by and i think efforts like the 6019 project that would deny that intake is only a downside in darkside failed in a way that we should not abide. Host from your book, time to build in the chapter campus cultures, harvard and yale, the first two universities were created as conservatories for orthodoxy into trad trainmen of religion to move to Larger Community to repent of this sins and seek redemption. This aim remains a driving purpose of Higher Education now largely sworn of its religious roots and looks like clot classm instruction and political activism the demand a Larger Society with mass repentance for grave collective sins. Guest that chapter really tries to make some sense of whats been going on on American College campuses in the last few years, it does that by trying to offer perspective about the mixed character of Higher Education and that makes character has been part of Higher Education, we demand a lot of things over university and we expect them to give them the skills that they need for the american economy, we expect them to give students access to the deepest truth and highest and most beautiful things in our civilization and we also expect them to be engaged in trying to improve our society to be active in trying to change things, all these things have been part of american Higher Education and the idea that campus activism began in the 1960s is untrue, campus activism as i suggested was actually the original purpose of the American University in harvard and you were created to advanced moral change in american society, the nature that is being advanced with the character in the sense of Higher Education involves the kind of social activism is not new, theres ways been a very tense balance between the different names in the aim of giving students skills for Economic Life in the aim of giving them access to a higher root in liberal education and changing society. I think the american elite campuses have fallen out of the balance were now feeling much too heavily in the direction of campus activism that is not about learning impeachment. It is not fundamentally academic, you have seen some displays of over liberalism on College Campuses that are troubling, closing off of knowledge and teaching rather than building up the knowledge. I think the answer to that is not to pretend that we can have Higher Education that is completely devoid and has nothing to do with the Larger Society. That is not what we should want or expect. I think the university has to answer fundamentally to the academic idea, everything that it does should be done in the form of teaching and learning and thats where some elite schools have become disconnected and recent years, i think the culture of liberal education that sees teaching and learning is fundamental to human forcing has enormous role to play in bringing the culture to over campuses back to violence and providing students the kind of enormous advantage Higher Education can give us. Host another contemporary headline, ivanka trump rips cancel culture after shes dropped Commencement Speaker Wichita State university after the students protest. Guest is the idea the student should not hear from people who they or their professors do not agree with. Campus is no place for opinions other than excepted mainstream consensus of our society, that view is advanced as though it were a form of rebellion of the establishment. It is the establishment, cultural progressivism owns all of her institutions and its enormously important that College Students here the views and the variety of use, its not just intellectual diversity for the purpose of diversity, i dont think its just anybody and everybody, there is a difference between hearing from people who play significant role in our society and people who are there to stir up trouble. But cancel culture broadly understood as its been used to keep out conservative voices, libertarian voices and others academic voices. Caller go ahead with your question or comment. I dont have a question. I have a statement. I worry about ourselves as a country. I worry about ourselves as how we view ourselves as american citizens. I get thank all the time for being an american military. I consider him a volunteer during the draft and i consider it i did was for my country and i viewed today a political system that looks like a tugofwar which are the same side of the i think we would be better to divest ourselves and require people to do their job and that for somebody for their views and they dont represent me, not one politician i know of in the United States or any state with treason me. Nobody in the state of oregon represents me. Ultimately, i disagree. There really is nowhere around the need. Its about what kind of law we should have and respond to changing circumstances. What weve got in the country is the system for legitimizing that kind of decisionmaking. We are coming as close as we can to allowing people to be heard, and for allowing the views of the majority to ultimately be advanced in ways that do not trample on the right. To put it mildly there are problems with it but that is the purpose of the system and very often but is that the system achieves. It is unsatisfying. Thats true. And i think one of the things to me that is central to why im a conservative as i dont expect the world to be satisfying. We can mitigate them and try to address them and make the most of them that this world i but ta perfect world. How to live with imperfection and how to address problems that confront us with ways that are legitimate and respect each other is the challenge at the core design of the government, and i think that the parties are an important part of solving the problem and finding ways to represent different views. I think institutions of government, state, federal and local buffalo are a part of that. The fact we are still dissatisfied at the end of it, thats life. But they are much less dissatisfied then we would be under those that didnt take your views as seriously. How are you doing . Im a notorious longterm cspan consumer and spent a lot of time watching and hearing. Mr. Le pen said something about the scale and character of discrimination changed. Thats not true. The scale has changed. Weve been watching videos of the police abuse from rodney king coming forward to a. With these all this time was quite the premises at its worst. You had a white Police Officer murder in unarmed disabled black man casually while looking into the camera. Think about that when you see what you see on the street today. Now, we have system institutional dissemination that goes on every day and the worst part of it, the murder aside, im talking about in the workplace people dont see every day and one of the problems in that regard i want to leave that on the side and talk about the false equivalency in the Republican Party and the democrats. We are looking at the evolution of people like Newt Gingrich and pat buchanan. It came to a head during the obama administration. Host tell us what the fathers and then we will let you hang up and get a response. Caller around the time of president obama is an observation where a plan was put together for republicans not to cooperate at all and in that regard, that led to a tea party and now we have donald trump republicans who are the ultimate manifestation host we are going to leave it there. Thank you for your thoughts. Guest i agree and i think what we saw was precisely utterly unacceptable and thats why people are out on the streets and why its perfectly clear in its central. I entirely agree with that. As far as characterizing the polarization as one party, that is a symptom of polarization more than a diagnosis of polarization. I think it is simply unquestionable both parties moved towards the edge over the last two or three decades. Its been driven by various changes in campaignfinance reform and cultural changes around the politics in social media and other things. There is no doubt democrats in d the bush era and the trump era have been part of god so we can certainly point to different people that played a different role in the process but we can agree that its been a huge problem for the politics in our country and the recovery of politics that is oriented to cooperation and to compromise not under a dream that we are all going to agree that by accepting the reality we are not going to and therefore we have to make the bargains and deals and that is where the best is about is giving each party some of what it wants in return for giving other parties some of what it wants. Its absolutely essential in the way politics work. But with, there are some issues that are nonnegotiable as we talked about before. The issue of basic human quality and respect is not negotiable. It is not a partisan issue and its not an issue we can ultimately allow to be put to the side so that the politics can take up other things. Its a fundamental question of human rights and equal dignity. It is essential to who he must be as a people in america. So, it needs to be front and center. Host what about the comment that there is a systemic institutionalized racism . Guest we have to see that racism is but a function of the attitudes of individuals and have the arrangements and organizations that we have established to structure the politics. I do think that we have made Real Progress in fighting some of the institutional racism but theres less of it than there was. But that doesnt mean we can stop the effort and it doesnt mean the work can be put down. These things were happening when there were not phones around to take video. It isnt something that just started. There was an enormous problem to be taken up as a fundamental challenge in American Life. And i think there is no question thats one of the ways in which the country has a lot of work before it to reach the ideals that we aspire to. We do aspire to those ideals and onto reach that widely shared aspiration, but the aspiration alone isnt enough. Host gregory of kansas city emails agreed the system requires compromise. How do we get to the point where compromise is unacceptable, this attitude seems to be more common on the right. Guest we havguest co. We haa cultural and political evolution in which the politics especially at the National Level is around a set of almost symbolic issues where each party essentially treats the other as the biggest problem. If that is the case, the problem to be solved you really cant compromise. The only solution to the problem is to get rid of the other party. But youre not going to get rid of the other party they have practical problems that stand in the way whether it is of a quality and racial reconciliation and standing in the way of the prosperity and opportunities available to the generations or whether it is standing in the way of life we want to have together. Those problems have to be taken up in the Public Policy and that can only be achieved by the process of compromise in the Political Institutions. I think that the political culture has been transformed in a way that understates and undermines the potential of compromise and accommodation. Its happened largely at the National Level. To say that its been caused by one party is a symptom of the problem not a diagnosis. There was an enormous amount of contempt for the right on the left and that is deeply destructive and makes it difficult for people to take seriously the reality that we will Work Together. And theres an enormous amount of content on the right, and that leads to the same problems that need to be addressed in the same way. We are not going away. The people they disagree with are still going to be here tomorrow. We have to think about politics as a way to reach an arrangement to live together with them as neighbors and fellow citizens, not as enemies. Host you are watching the tv on cspan2, television for serious readers that this is the monthly program. This month is author and scholar. We are concentrating on the three most recent books the great debate, thomas paine and right and left him out in 2013. The tractor type of renewing americas social contract and the age of individualism, 2017, and a time to build, the most recent from family and community, from congress to the campus, how committing to the institution can revive the american dream. Charlie is in Roslyn Heights new york and you are on the air. Caller hello, everybody. I would like to make two points. I agree we dont value character in our society anymore. I usually tell people the most important thing in life is just be a good decent person. That is the first thing we should be. That isnt valued in our society. But also, we have a problem in our society that isnt mentioned in the fact we have a concentration of wealth and communication with it. We have the corporate media. I think that is controlled in the debate. We need to talk with one another and i do not hear of that. I would love to hear the debate between those that have opposing views. There are only two views, there are many and we need to get them out and debate and talk to one another and that isnt happening. I think the concentration of wealth and concentration of the media as something to do with it. Host thank you very much. My guess is that most of us think that that would be a good idea to hear the two points of view and have a reasonable argument. Guest it has to do with why that doesnt happen very much. And why when we do have things we call to the debate, they tend to be more like reading talking points than 12 people lined up on the cable news panel saying a few words. I think some of th of that has o with an assessment of the public Attention Span which is not fair to the public. As cspan knows, there are people willing to listen and follow what is happening in the public life and think about it seriously and engage with it in a deep way. I also think that there are some deeper economic and cultural incentives that have shaped things in the way that this caller suggests. With concentration especially media concentration, but its a complicated question in the midCentury America the politics looks back to so much. It was a much more concentrated media architecture where you have three television networks, two or three National Newspapers that had enormous cultural power to shape a mainstream consensus and things were much more concentrated. We had a fragmentation of the media because the internet and other economic pressures where there were many more voices out there now. And it is often difficult to tell who to trust in what to believe and whether they are actually following any kind of standards that we need to take seriously, but there was a greater diversity of voices. At the same time there was also great are not lesser economic concentration where the economic power in the media world is very heavily centered around a few large corporate owners of the media companies. And we have Enormous Economic concentration in general in thee economy now. Its grown over the last 20 years. I think these things have to be understood in tandem somehow. And you know, ultimately, breaking up the concentration is not a simply good in itself that has to be part of the life and a free society where there are dangerous concentrations and monopolies that have to be broken up. But the situation of the media is much more complex than that and we are dealing simultaneously with a fragmentation of the places and the consolidation of the ownership. Host here is the text. This is from maxwell palisades california. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your book, the great debate and the political philosophy class last fall. It opens the door for me on human nature, institutional roles, hereditary politics and when to make reform. My question for you is how we can eliminate on the healthy populism on both the left and right and get the general public to trust the politicians who i believe and the experience and wisdom outlined. Guest thank you. Its always nice to hear the book being assigned to College Classes and especially gratifying to hear from someone who benefited from that or got something out of it. And you know, i think that the question of populism which in some ways has always been a core question in the political life but of course it is very much alive in our contemporary politics now. Theres one way to think about the condition of the institution. I think that we dont really taste the choice between the elitism and populism, between the view that the people have all the answers and to be empowered or practically in only some have the answers and it should have the power. The answer that is embodied in the constitutional system is that no one has all the answers and Public Access tand politicse itself around a reality that no one has the answers and no one should have all the power so it gives people some power, quite a lot to elect Public Officials to exercise power over them through the mechanism of electoral leverage but it also gives certain kinds of institutions significant power. Judges are at a distance from the public. The president isnt as directly answerable as members of congress and we have competing Power Centers and levels and the layers of power in the american federalism and separation of powers. It seems to me that promise no one knows everything and that being the case, the system has to put different Power Centers and attention with one another so for the change to happen there has to be broad agreement over evil period so that it sustained long enough to create a majority and a president that will support it in the general public sentiment that will enable it to be accepted. That is lummis can be frustrating and there is a role for populism and the politics. Its important that the system be answerable and take serious the priorities but we also have to respect the experience in government, that there is such a thing as expertise in Public Policy through for example im not a supporter of some like term limits in congress. I dont think the people that create the problems in congress are those with the most experience and it seems to me somebody has to have the power in a kind of system an you mighs well be those that are answerable than a permanent bureaucracy or staff structure. As a matter of finding balance, the system is pretty good at that on the whole. Caller hello. Thank you, cspan for taking my call. Racism is like dust, it is everywhere in the world and until you shine a light on it coming you do not see it. America should take this issue to regain its leadership and deal with it and the rest of the world will follow. Now my question how we make the Supreme Court an independent body again by suggesting to take away the appointment ship from president and also for the body to renounce the political dedication and writing it in their decisionmaking. There it is. Guest when it comes to decisions, to argue for the fully independent Supreme Court makes sense if we think the court will always make better decisions than the political system which is answerable to the public. Who will decide who is on the court . I think the system reaches a compromise that makes sense which is the judges have lifetime tenure, they are not answerable to the elections or a officials that theofficials thae appointed by the officials. Ive benefited the idea for the lifetime tenure on the Supreme Court is something that can be rethought. And for the 18 year terms for examples of it you dont have justices are appointed when they are 50 and then there for 40 years on the court and they were sort of stuck with whatever you get. But you have a little bit more of a chance to change the makeup of the court. They would only serve a period is 18 years, so they would get two or three appointments and you would have a little bit more balance between the Democratic Politics and independent judiciary. I think that is a workable idea and i would be considered the framers didnt imagine anybody would be sitting on the court for 40 years when they created lifetime tenure. But the balance is never going to be perfect or just write. Host next call from maryland. Go ahead. Caller good afternoon. I have a question i would like to preface with a comment or lead up to the question i dont see myself as a republican, democrat or independent. The end what you just mentioned about the contempt that the democrats have for the republicans, i believe from what ive seen in keeping up with Current Events it began in 2000 because democrats feel that they were robbed of the white house by the Supreme Court. And that continues all the way into 2010 with a deceit or appointment of obama and the Senate Republicans holding that up. They feel they were robbed of that seat and then it continues on into 2016 where they will believe they were robbed of a second seat because some of the clinton. But in all those instances, the constitution is what fooled out coming off thei not their emotit they believed they were robbed. My question for you is your characterization of President Trumps character and how do you put that up against beginning in the 2016 exoneration of Hillary Clinton and the email that the move directly into the crossfire hurricane at the end of july and continued with as we know now be illegal fisa warrants in which there were three of them, one original and one renewal and then it morphs into the crossfire was to tel host tell you what. Ill lost their. Building a pattern there. What is your take . Guest like a good prosecutor. First of all, i think the above story begins earlier and that you can see the contempt for the right and the hearings in the 1980s and you can see it earlier than that. The polarization of the politics didnt just begin, i agree it is worse in this century for some of the reasons mentioned in a number of other reasons. I dont defend Hillary Clintons character either. I dont think we have good options in the election. There were two candidates under fbi investigation. But the question of the character about all of these particular scandals. Its how he treats people and thinks about people and i do think that there is a kind of narcissism at the core of the faith that he thinks about the world. But it leads to the kind of bullying attitude and i dont think that its ultimately about a particular scandals and how they get worked out. I think that its about the mans character and there is just no way around it. Host whenever we have a guest on we ask him or her to list some of their favorite books. And here were the choices. Alexis toqueville democracy in america, adam smith for three of moral sentiments, george wells and crisis of the house divided and george eliot, middlemarch. Tell us about the last two books. Guest it is a very indepth study about the Lincoln Douglas debates. He was a political theorist and philosopher and teacher for many years to. It is a reading of the debate that tries to put them in an extraordinary way i think amazingly successful in the philosophical context of the classical political cross into the way of thinking about morality. Its to show the issues in the american politics at the moment of the greatest crisis. It is an extraordinary book that i would recommend to everybody. It is still in print and well worth the while. Looking at the list now it is the only work of fiction on the list. As a great english novel written by george eliot, the pen name of marian evans. One of the great English Writers of the century. It was published in the team 71 but it is set in the 1830s in the english midlands. It is the kind of ethical model that suggests some important issues of family and community that of when and how social change happened into just a gripping story. I interested in graduate school by a wonderful teacher who laid it out for the students as a way of thinking about the human condition. Host and according to yuval levin Companies Currently reading Robert Putnams the upswing and alan jacobs of the year othe yearof our lord 1943. Guest hes sort of known for a book he wrote in 2000 described the breakdown of american civic institutions and the rise of loneliness and individualism in an extreme fo form. One of the great social observers of American Life and its now been delayed a little bit to the full. But it looks at a subject we thy took up earlier. The pattern of individualism in American Life over the course of the past century describing the path that shows the coming together and pulling apart when you look at the socialist indicators. Not only civic engagement, but also immigration, cultural diversity, also economic inequality and the condition of many institutions. You find an america that was individualistic at the beginning of the 20th century that mobilized in the direction of solidarity in the middle of the 20th century and then began to pull apart and now we are at another extreme. Alan jacobs is a professor of literature and has written some wonderful books about the intersection of intellectual life and theology and politics and society. This book was published a few years ago and is about a group of speakers in the final year of the war who envisioned with the first order would look like. Its kind of a group intellectual biography that is grippingly done so i would recommend it to everybody. Host has bowling alone helped . Guest it was met with criticism at the time which in some ways i think was right which is not part of the described as the demise of the American Civic Life was more the evolution of the civic life. People were doing Different Things together so they old clubs and civic organizations definitely did get weaker but people found other ways to join together. But i do think that the fundamental argument that he made is that the country was headed in the direction of isolation and dangerous excess of individualism and it probably became worse over time with Political Polarization and technology that you know, the central media and others have in some ways brought us together but actually do that by keeping us apart. Many of the trends that he points to have not only been shown to have been right have gotten worse over time. So on the whole it has worked out. Host with our guest to yuval levin, 202 7488200 in the east and central time zone and want to participate in the conversation, 202 7488201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. We will also scroll through the text number and or social media sites. Michael finley from new york, good afternoon. Caller good afternoon. Thank you for having me on. I have a few observations and questions. We are a nation of debaters and it is essential to arrive at better solution is to the problems. I also like to reject that a gentle man that wrote a book on popular as some said that politics and politicians will not save us, and i thoroughly agree with him on that. My question is although compromise is essential to getting to the solutions, how can and why should one compromise their beliefs in something they believe runs counter to it, case in point, the abortion issue no matter what side you are on. Host thank you. Yuval levin. Guest it points to the question of what we mean by compromise. And i also think it could mean giving up on core beliefs. It means getting part of what they wan want on a practical poy question by prioritizing what you want based precisely on your core beliefs so that ultimately you are forced to decide what you are willing to give and what most matters to you. So, there are certain issues like abortion and others where it is difficult to compromise. But we do compromise. Even on those questions when it comes to practical matters. When we face a choice that is an all or nothing choice, we strive to turn it into something more like give and take. I think because it has been taken over by the courts in our particular country it has been less open to this kind of compromise. I think there are a lot of people on the prolife side who would say that it should be determined by the states. And there would certainly be a bigger city of outcomes if we did that. Some states would have a very liberal abortion regimes in some much less so. We would certainly have more restrictions than we have now. The United States has the most liberal regime in the western world. Practically no constraints whatsoever. Right from the moment of the presidency. It is much more extreme than any other countries have. I think that a lot of people have strong views on the question and would be open to a more moderate flow of a while for the views to be respected. So compromise is about give and take. It isnt about the Core Principles but its about applying those practical questions in ways that allow you to tell the difference between gaining ground and losing ground by making it clear what matters most to you and thats where it becomes possible. Host jam in california. Caller my question is when he saw the examples of police brutality. Another against the gentle men in buffalo who didnt seem to be doing anything but was shoved down and then there were like 50 Police Officers that walked past him. One kind of looked down at him and was told to get away. We assume that it was horrible and brutal. The other gentleman was right. I think the problem, there is a huge racial problem but there is also a problem with just simply badly Trained Police that seem to be endemic all through the country in many places even liberal places and liberal places have been getting much more demonstrators and protesting then the conservative places have. So thank you for taking my question. Caller guest i appreciate that. Some of what we are seeing is simply the tendency of power to corrupt it is the reason we have to always be ways of keeping power in check and making people with authority accountable. Some of it is abuse of power. Its also important to see that these are of course exceptions in the practices there are many of all races and backgrounds that have to be respected as the Police Training practices and other things an that social institutions more broadly or reformed and transformed to address the problems we have, so it is a very consultative problem. But i think there is no question that abuse of power is a constant threat and bad weather it is done in the name of racism or the form of abuse, it should be accepted into some of the things we are learning weve known for years that this kind of abuse existed needs to be addressed. You cant just wait for this to pass. It has to be a moment of changes some of the ways we think about policing. It respects the need for the border it calls on us to take the issue seriously and never forget they have to also be watched and their use of the power. Host you write this is the irony that we have repeatedly confronted. The institutions that led us to demand that they be uprooted or were demolished, but we cannot address those failures without renewing and rebuilding those very institutions. There is a tendency in moments like this and they dont just mean the past few weeks. But the past few decades to say we need to burn down the institutions, get them off of us and be liberated from them in the struggle against the establishment and the struggle against the elite. All these things are understandable and they are driven by frustrations and problems. But we need functional institutions and need responsible, respectable elites. We need the police, there is no way around it. We may need power to be exercised in responsible ways and we have to demand more of them. Its not enough to say we have to get rid of them because ultimately our society cannot function without them so the challenge is harder than that. How do we renew and revitalize and hold them to account. Host dam in massachusetts, please go ahead with your question or comment. Caller it is great to talk to you this afternoon. I want to first give you a little background about myself and first of all, ive been a student of demographics for years and i also wrote recently march 4 the daily news article about morality in america. We all think about our missing truths. I like to employ those letters and where it connects with my statement to you i kind of have this mantra that has been like part of my dna for years. It goes Something Like this. As the secular world goes up with a lack of locations, civilization goes down. I want your comments on that statement and then my Closing Remarks are i also want to say to you that education or lets say education of morality in the proper sense. Fullstop many of the problems these people have been calling about in the country, and this is a beautiful country that we live. Thank you. Host yuval levin . Guest every form with her it is a way that can inspire us to be better people, rather than just inspire us to lose faith and hope in the country. Whether its education that is directed specifically to explosively forming character helping to shape us i think ultimately the formation is a moral formation one way or another so that it will lead to moral of the formation and that is why the health, standing, director of the institutions matters enormously. The evolution of religiosity in america is a complicated story. In some ways, we certainly have seen the decline of religious practice and affiliation, but in other ways we have seen an increase in the demand and the hunger for the moralism in our public life and that is the hunger that traditionally has been answered by the religious institutions and can be answered that way again if they approach the society in the terms of contemporary problems by offering themselves about solutions to the sort of challenges they face now. Whether those are challenges of isolation and loneliness, whether they are challenges of racism and injustice. There is an enormous opportunity now for the institutions in our society that are directed to the moral formation to rise up and offer themselves up as respectable, responsible and informative institutions, and i think we dont see it enough and this is the moment the demands of so what im asking is how we might make our way forward from here on how we might revitalize our society and make the coming years but within the last few years. At kind of emergence of unabashedly moral institutions offering themselves up is a way for each of us to become better from the local and personal level all the way up to the national is absolutely essential. Host you use the word devotion in your conclusion in the time to build. Guest i think devotion is what is required for us to be properly and appropriately committed to thes these instituo we belong to as a society. I think all of us look for things to be devoted to, for things that we can admire and respect and look up to. And therefore devote ourselves tto, ways that they might make better by making ourselves more like the things that we admire. Rather than just promote ourselves or put ourselves out there on a platform on our own performing, what we really want is to be part of something worthwhile, something that helps improve our country and the world and so sources of devotion, one of the things most needed now we dont think so because we buy the language of these kind of easygoing citizens in our society. But in some ways i think there was an enormous hunger for the proper objects of devotion and the revitalization is going to proceed in a way that happens. Host text message from john from , the only doctor in mississippi. Could you please comment on the concept of Political Correctness . Guest Political Correctness is a term that is used to describe the ways in which similar in mainstream institutions demand to certain political tenets of usually those of the left of the progressivism and at the price of admission to American Life, so you cant be a professor if your views are not those of the majority. Or you cant participate in some professional institutions would be a journalist. I think that it is a problem on its part of the problem we confront us in th our liberalisa lot of our institutions in society. You know, theres also way thers that we on the right cant exaggerate sometimes and can imagine we are being held back because of the people have conspired to keep us back. But in fact i think we also have to be better at offering ourselves as an alternative as a way forward for america and offering up a more attractive and appealing and engaging forum of what the white house has to say. I think too often it doesnt seem to be speaking to everybody in america and when that happens we shouldnt be surprised that its not attractive to everybody in america. Its to ask first how i can do better, how we can do better before imagining any problems we have might be the fault of other people. Host have you ever been canceled on a College Campus . Guest no, i have not. I spend a lot of time on College Campuses. Back when thou wast of allowed and you could travel and go somewhere and see people in person. I hope to get back to that when its allowed again, when the pandemic uses up. I certainly have seen instances of disorder around some political events and also happened to be at uc berkeley about three years ago now on a night when there were riots and fire on campus and all kinds of things, they were not about me thankfully, but ive seen that happen and i know people that have suffered quite serious forms of that kind of culture thankfully i have not myself. Host back to george find a time to build. At the heart of this pressure is what has come to be called identity politics on College Campuses. It appears to amount to an acute emphasis on Group Identity and structural power relationships among different racial ethnic sexual and socioeconomic camps. These relationships are understood in terms of oppressors and the oppressed. Host guest what i am describing there is an effort to try to understand contemporary american progressivism at least as it presents itself on College Campuses in the best terms possible. I think that there is a way of understanding the distinction between the left and the right and getting to those roots and what we started with today. By saying that they think about the political challenges this worker versus disorder or civilization versus barbarism into the left tends to think of them in terms of the oppressor and the oppressed. In part its because by beginning from the sense that the social order is difficult, but people are highly imperfect they tend to think the social order is the hardest thing to sustain and therefore is the necessary prerequisite for anything else we might do in our society. The left tends to think that depression is a social problem and so everything has to be understood in terms of power relationships between different groups. I think there is some truth to both of these, but it does seem to be ultimately that in order to have justice, you do first need to have order, and we have to worry about the social order so we can have the kind of society that has been capable of also worrying about justice. But i think that this discussion, disagreement between the left and right runs very deep and both sides offer very serious argument about how to make our society that are and in that sense i think that it serves us well. Host roger in sarasota florida, go ahead, please. Caller your recent mention of term limits is a possible way of breaking the cycle of the predominant role of our political lives with federal legislators and devoting the majority of time to raising money for the reelection of host i apologize you are cutting in and out, though i think that we got the gist of the term limits of the comments that he wanted to make. Guest to me that question is what would be the solution. What you end up with if you have term limits in congress is a very permanent staff bureaucracy, the people who builbuilt up the knowledge and experience over time. I think that is worse than the situation of those that are there for the long term are also the people answerable to the public. I can certainly see the case for term limits in the sense that some problems we have a rise oue of the kind of corruption that can follow from people being in these chumps for too long. The problem is simply begging for term limits would create a worse problem, much worse problem and in some ways worse than the problem we have now wishes he would still have people that are ultimately corruptible and corrupted over time because they have been there forever they would be lobbyists, staff, people around the system, and i dont think that that would be better. I simply see the problems, but i dont think that the term limits are a solution. Host some would call that the deep state, what did they . Guest that is a way of calling it the deep state. I think that we come its important that the people that remain over time be elected, but i also do think that there is value in experience that there is such a thing as being a legislator. There is such a thing as expertise and we do want people in congress who know what they are doing. Those that have been a while and established themselves i think in some ways they are less in the grips of the power of money. They. Fullstop their own constituency into their own authority over time. On the whole i think that term limits would serve us well. Host before we run out of time, i want to read this email from patricia in keyport new jersey. If the growth of the federal government picking the outcome more important, federalism isnt taken seriously by the powers of dc. We no longer have the freedom to experiment with different ways of doing things. The Supreme Court has power. None of the founders envisioned this. People are still selfsupporting and moving to state scenarios where likeminded people live. Can they survive such segregation . Guest first of all i very much agree that there is a paradox where we have had less and less trust in the government and at the same time it gives more and more power to the government and resources. And it certainly does seem to me one way forward is increasing the amount that flows through the state and local government. The federalism offers us a way to turn our growing diversity into a strength rather than to let us become a debilitating weakness for democracy. And i think that the government is more functional at the state and local level and so we should allow more governing to happen at the state and local level. So, it is both as a matter of constitutional principle and just as a matter of basic political practice it would make a lot of sense for us now to emphasize the way in which our differences can be expressed. We have seen some of that work in the response to the pandemic which has hit different places differently and therefore has required a different places to respond differently. I think generally speaking we have been well served by the federalist system in crisis. And its something that could serve well in a lot of other areas. Host chin in boca raton florida, th that afternoon. Caller good afternoon. Can you hear me . Guest we are listening. I just want to make a comment if i couldve been a question for doctor yuval levin. First of all, i am a native of northeastern minnesota tracing my ancestry for four generations to people who settled on the land in southern minnesota as farmers and minnesota as people who had the homestead act of Abraham Lincoln and so i know quite about the culture. I grew up in the working class, members of the department of labour party and she was a young man who wanted to go into politics with people like hubert humphrey. Im now conservative, reagan conservative as it were, and i find it just incredibly ironic that liberal cities and states would have this explosion of violence into this horrible murder of this walkman it seems to me the irony says all. So my comment i could go on about racism and the culture in minnesota to get some real insight but i will spare you that. My question to you is as said earlier i think he said when he was at the age of eight and obviously how does he explain what is his explanation of the collegians of Jewish Americans by and large and ultraliberal socialists and socialist marxist, that liberal philosophy in american politics . I find it just crazy host i think we got the point. Lets ask if he cares to answer that question. Guest i would say first of all on the first point going back it is a tragedy, and a terrible tragedy atbat. The entire country is rising up to respond to. On the second question, you know, there certainly are deep roots both in terms of the ethnic politics and in terms of the kind of tendency towards the political radicalism among american jews. But i would say that there is also a fairly large and in some ways growing segment of american Orthodox Jews in particular client to the conservatives and some mine is conservative, too. The argument the left and right ought to make is to reach beyond the bounds of th religious and ethnic and racial communities in detroit to speak to all of us as americans as a single nation to appeal to our highest aspirations and deepest ideals. Both parties are at their best when they do that and certainly that is the kind of context we should want. Host if somebody were to buy one of your books which one would you recommend to them . Guest you cant pick among them. Its like a pyramid and their children. A book that has sold the best is the great debate, which is read in College Courses and translated into a few languages and speaks to people most. But obviously i think people should read them all. Host and the one weve been talking about in our time with them is the fractured republic as well as his most recent, a time to build. For the past two hours youve been our guest on booktv. We greatly appreciate your time. Guest thank you very much and thank you to cspan