Clearly into the microphone as we are recording it today and cspan, booktv is here as well. Following the q a we will have a signing at this table and if you have not already purchased your books have plenty at the front of the store at the registers. Tonight im excited to welcome yuval levin to politics and prose celebrating his newest book, a time to build from family and community to congress in the campus how recommitting to our institutions can revive the american dream. As the nation faces increasing divisiveness fueled by partisan politics, cultural wars and populist on both sides he argues that rather than trying to tear down existing institutional frameworks we should be looking to these or these as sources of strength and support. Through a time to build it shows that our Current Crisis isnt completely due to the presence of an oppressive force but to the absence of uniting forces and he urges us to commit ourselves to renewing the vitality of institutions. This ranges from the family and schools to churches and the military. To renew our ties to each other. He is the founder, Founding Editor of national affairs, director of social cultural and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise institute and contribute in editor of national review, cofounder and Senior Editor of the new atlantis and has authored the fractured republic in the great debate. His essays and articles have appeared in numerous publications including the new york times, washington post, wall street journal among many others. Please join me in welcoming to politics and prose yuval levin. [applause] thank you very much. I appreciate the welcome and i appreciate you being here tonight. I am excited to chat about this book and what it might say for a moment that takes a little work to understand for it this is a book about what has gone wrong in our country in recent years and what we can do about it. Something that has gone wrong i think is reasonably clear but exactly what it is actually isnt as clear as it sometimes things or imagine or pretend. We americans are in a sense living through a social crisis and we can see that in everything from vicious partisan polarization to rampant cultural resentments and upsurge of isolation, alienation, the spirit that has sent to suicide rates climbing and dripping in academic of oil. Abuse in recent years. These are deep dysfunctions and seemingly very different parts of our society but they seem to have common roots and yet it is not easy to say what exactly those routes are, what exactly has gone wrong. Part of the crisis of one of its symptoms is that we cant quite seem to get a handle on just what that is. Traditional economic concerns dont cut it as explained and we certainly went through a severe recession in 20072008 but it ended more than a decade ago and now weve been living through one of the longest economic expansions in the modern era with very low on appointment and inflation and Interest Rates wages are rising. It is not so americans are suffering economically but the problems we have on that front dont add up to the enormous crisis that we are going through with other familiar measures of wellbeing dont offer obvious explanations either. Americans are as healthy as safe as weve ever been in what are we complaining about . In fact, some people argue there isnt anything to complain about or that the frustration and anxiety that seemed to overwhelm us now are rooted in some kind of imaginary grievances driven by our politics but they themselves might be the problem steven of harvard takes these complaints to be what he describes as an irritable gestures of selfindulgence and gratitude in a recent book he looks over mountains of data on wealth and health and health and safety and choice and he concludes the populace complaints are just detached from reality. Its a dangerous and indiscriminate pessimism can lead to fatalism to wondering why we should throw time and money at a hopeless cause and it can lead to radicalism called smash the machine or drain the swamp. But surely although these kinds of responses are understandable and part in public frustration is not some kind of selfdelusion, especially frustration that runs the steep and revealed itself in such a broad range of symptoms. The happy data are not wrong exactly and neither are the encouraging Economic Indicators but if these dont ask plane the reigning sentiments over time we should ask ourselves what those indicators might be ignoring. What signs we might be missing. Our usual measures of wealth and health and personal freedom dont explain the problem because those familiar indicators important as they are to understanding our society are largely material an individual. The ss are wellbeing on her own but none of us can experience wellbeing on our own and it is exactly the joys of society and the junctures of individuals being intricacies of life that trouble showed. Many of our struggles seem rooted and relational problems, loneliness and isolation, mistrust, suspicion, alienation, polarization and these are the things that we have now and their failures of sociality. They fall into a blind spot for our technical culture so how do we explain a crisis of connectedness like this . Some people argue the trouble is fundamentally philosophical, metaphysical that liberalism has failed, they say, because it fails to offer a sufficient vocabulary or architecture for solidarity. Other people say although traditional measures of growth and prosperity might look fine are probably still economic in a deeper sense, socio sons and they say can separate capital zone creates levels of inequality that make it impossible for people to feel like equal parts of a larger hole or to believe in legitimacy of our Political Economic order. Other people suggest external pressures like trade or immigration for internal pressures like racism or identity politics have left us incapable of hanging together and there is some truth to all these things, surely, they all get something important to write treat human person as embedded in a larger hole whether metaphysical or moral or social or economic and they see that what is wrong now has to do with the way in which we live out that indebtedness. I think they are still missing something crucial. When we think about our problems in these ways we tend to imagine our society as a vast, open space that is full of people who are having trouble linking hands. We talk about breaking down walls are building bridges or loverly playing fields, casting unifying narrative but there is a missing step joining together and recovering and belonging and trust and legitimacy. What we are missing although we really put it this way is a structure, a shape for our social life, a way to give purpose and concrete meaning and identity for the things we did together. If American Life is a big open space it is not space filled with individuals but a space filled with structures of social life, its a space filled with institutions and if we are too often failing to foster belonging in legitimacy and trust more than a failure of connection we confront the failure of institutions. Institutions do a lot more they connect us in understanding our social crisis in terms of what they are and what they do could help us to see that crisis in a new light. That is the understanding that this book tries to advance. What is an institution . Wants it wont surprise you to learn there are a lot of different academic definitions of the turbid the book thanks through a number of these but for our purposes let me suggest a general definition, it draws together Academic Work but looks to the problem that we confront in our society now. By institutions i mean the durable forms of our common life, the shapes in the structures of what we do together so some institutions are organizations and they have Something Like a corporate form, university or hospital or school or business or Civic Association and these are all institutions and technically, legally formalized and some institutions are durable form and maybe they are shaped by laws or norms or rules but without a Corporate Structure the family is an institution and in some ways the first and foremost institution of every society we could talk about the institution of marriage or political or particular tradition of profession as an institution and the rule of law itself is an institution. That they are durable is essential. And it comes institution keeps the general shape over time and so it shapes the realm of life in which it might be said to operate it. Usually changes only very gradually and incrementally, flash mobs dont count as institutions. Most important what is distinct about the institution is that it will form in the deepest sense, a form is a structure, contour and it is the shape of the whole, the organization that speaks of its purpose and logic and function in meaning. A social form, an institution, is not just a bunch of people but a bunch of people ordered together to achieve a purpose to pursue a goal and to advance an idea and that means institutions are also, by their nature, formative and structure our interactions and as a result of that they structure us and shape our habits, expectations and ultimately they shape our character. They help to form us and that formative role is how institutions relate to the social crisis we are living through now. When we think about the role of institutions in American Life now we might tend to think first in terms of our loss of trust or institutions and we talk about that a lot and is a trend we hear about, measures that are easy to find and paint a grim picture. Gallup has kept track of what it calls on americans confidence institutions for decades and in most cases it started out doing this in the early 1970s and continues to do it on a regular basis and the trend is unmistakable. From big business and banks and professions to the branches of the federal government, the news media, the academy found confidence in our institutions have been plummeting consistently and in the early 70s 80 of americans said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in doctors and hospitals, for example. Last year at that figure was 37 . Forty years ago 65 of americans that they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in organized religion but last year less than 40 said that. 60 of americans express confidence in the Public Schools in the early 70s, just about a third did last year. Even in 1975 a year after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace 52 of americans expressed confidence in the presidency. Last year 32 did. Gallup even found amazingly that 42 of the public had confidence in congress in the 1970s and last year that figure was 12 and even that seems high and you have to wonder who these people are who say their prominence in congress. This pattern holds for just about all the institutions that gallup asked about. Military is the only major exception will think about that in the second but the overall trend is unmistakable. The iraqi public has gone from extraordinary levels of confidence in our major institutions to really striking levels of mistrust. What do we mean when we say that we dont trust institutions . The answer has a lot to do with what institutions are and do. It takes us back to that question of how they form us in every Significant Institution carries out some important task in society. They educate children, enforced the law or serving the poor just providing service and making some product meeting a need we have. It does that by establishing a structure and process of a form for combining peoples efforts toward a common scene that task but in the process that institution also forms that people to carry out that task effectively and responsibly and reliably, it shapes the people within it to be trustworthy and thats what it means to trust in institutions but we trust in institution and it has an ethic that make the people within it more trustworthy. We might trust the little institution when it takes seriously the Public Interest and forms the people in it to do the same. We trust the military because of als courage and honor and duty and carrying out the defense of the country and it clearly shapes people who do that too. We trust the business because it promises quality and integrity and meeting a need we have and seems to reward its people when they deliver and we trust the school because it builds the culture and makes its people devoted to learning and teaching and keeping kids happy and safe. We trust the Journalistic Institution for example because it has high standards of honesty or accuracy and in reporting the news and it makes its people reliable. We lose faith in an institution when we no longer believe that a place that kind of ethical or formative role, shaping the people within it to be trustworthy. One way that can happen is when institutions claim to enforce an ethic of response ability but plainly fail to do that and instead shield and empower bad behavior like when a bank treats its customers or when a member of the clergy abuses a child and that kind of gross abuse of power obviously undermines public trust and institutions and is a familiar form of corruption but is not new and there are plenty of examples of it in our time but there are plenty of examples in every time. It does not quite explain the distinct loss of confidence in institutions in our day but another related but different way which institutions could lose her trust is when it fails to impose an ethic on people within it altogether and doesnt seem to see that formation as a purpose and when the people in the institutions no longer see it as a mold of their character and behavior but as a platform for themselves to perform on and to raise their profiles and to be seen in society. An institution like that seems not to be worthy of our trust, not because it failed to earn above because it doesnt seem to seek it or desired it and i think Something Like that has been happening to a lot of our institutions in American Life in the last few decades. We dont think of our institutions as formative but is performative and with the presidency and congress are just stages for performative political outrage when a University Becomes a venue for virtue signal lean on one side or the other and when journalism is indistinguishable for activism on one side or the other and when the Church Becomes a political stage they become a lot harder to trust because they arent asking for our trust, theyre just asking for our attention. In our time a lot of the most significant social and political and cultural, intellectual institutions in our country are in the process of going through this transformation from old to platform. The few exceptions and most notably the military and unabashedly formative of our National Institutions seem to prove that rule because they tend to be the few institutions in which we arent losing faith. Many of the truly novel institutions of the 21st century, especially the virtual institutions of social media are inherently shaped as platforms and not as molds. It would be strange to trust a platform and we generally dont. That change of attitude that decline in the expectation of our institutions should be formative of the people within them is at the heart of our loss in state of institutions and its at the turn of our broader social crisis because institutions understood as part forms rather than molds is a stage to perform on more than it means to form and shape our character are less able to offer us a but subjects of loyalty and sources of legitimacy and ways of Building Mutual trust. Examples of this transformation from a platform are everywhere around us once you start looking for it. Many cases our institutions are being made into platforms not just for any performance but for a performative virtue and performative outrage in that vast polarized culture war that is so much of our society is living through. In one institution after another we find people who ought to think of themselves as insiders shaped by distinct purpose and integrity of the institutions they are in but instead function as outsiders display themselves, building their own personal brand. This is obvious in politics and is there any doubt that donald trump sees the presidency as a stage for performative outrage in himself as a performer acting on it rather than as an executive acting in and through it. What exactly is he doing when he tweets his displeasure at the department of justice. The department of Justice Works for him and if he had a sense of his job that is shaped by the institutional contours he would direct the executive branch rather than complain about it and maybe its a good thing he doesnt know he could do that but he could and the president normally would and his sense of his job is just another stage for the Reality Television shows that his life has been for so long but is there any question at the same time that many members of congress, both parties now run for office less to be involved and legislate a bark and work of a prominent platform in the culture wars and to become more visible and cable news or talk radio and to build a bigger social media following and to use that elected office mostly as a platform to complain about the various institutions they worked so hard to enter. They see that is what their voters want and so they are always performing with their core partisan audience. Our two Major Political parties now really any other than to platforms other than displaying or elevating narcissism. To even remember what the rule of the palooka party is to be . We look beyond politics and think about the profession of journalism as an example. It is institutional strength and its insistence on a formative integrity and on a process of editing and verification that helps us to be sure that what it provides is reliable. Today a lot of leader journalists constantly step outside of those institutional constraints and address the public directly on social media or cable news building their own personal brands on a platform rather than participating in the work of institutions. If you look in on twitter you will find a lot of professional reporters effectively professionalizing themselves. Journalists