Clearly into the microphone as we are recording it today. Cspan, booktv is here as well. Following the q and a will have a signing at the table. If you havent already purchased books we had plenty at the front of the store at the registers. Tonight im very excited to welcome yuval levin to politics and prose, celebrating his newest book, a time to build. From family and community to congress and the campus, how recommitting to our institutions can revise the american dream. As the nation faces increasing divisiveness fueled by partisan politics, culture wars and populace anger on both sides, levin argues rather than trying to tear down existing institutional frameworks we should be looking to them as sources of strength and support. Through a time to build he shows our Current Crisis isnt completely due to the presence of an impressive oppressive force but the absence of uniting forces and urges us to commit ourselves to renewing the vitality of institutions. Ranging from the family and schools to churches and the military. To renew our ties to each of the festivities the Founding Editor of national affairs, director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise institutes. Contributing 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 and wall street journal among many others. Please join me in welcoming to politics and prose, yuval levin [applause] thank you very much. Thank you, i appreciate the welcome i appreciate you being here on a friday night. I am excited to chat a little bit about this book and what it might say to a moment that takes a little work to understand. This is a book about some of whats gone wrong in our country in recent years and what we can do about it. Nothing has gone wrong is reasonably clear about exactly what it is, actually isnt as clear as we sometimes think or imagine or pretend. We americans are in a sense living through a social crisis. We can see that in everything from vicious partisan polarization to rapid culture war resentments and upsurge of isolation, alienation, despair that is sent suicide rates climbing and driven an epidemic of opioid abuse in recent years. These are deep dysfunctions and seemingly different parts of our society but they seem to have common roots. Yet its not easy to say what exactly those roots are. What exactly has gone wrong. Part of the crisis, one of its symptoms as we cant quite seem to get a handle on just what that is. Traditional economic concerns dont really cut it as explanations. We certainly went through a severe recession in 2007 and 2008 but ended more than a decade ago and was actually now been living through one of the longest economic expansions in the modern era. We are very low in employment and inflation and Interest Rates wages are rising. Its not that some americans arent suffering economically with the problems we have on that front dont really add up to the enormous crisis we are going through. Other familiar kinds of measures of wellbeing dont offer obvious explanations either. Americans are as healthy and safe as weve ever been. You might say, what we complaining about . In fact, some people argue there isnt anything to complain about or that the frustration and anxiety that seems to overwhelm us now are rooted in some kind of imaginary grievances through and by our politics. That they themselves might be the problem. Stephen pickard from harvard takes these kinds of complaints to be what he describes as irritable gestures of selfindulgent ingratitude. In a recent book he looks over mountains of data on wealth and health and safety and choice and he concludes that populace complaints on all sides of our politics are just detached from reality. He said they are dangerous too indiscriminate pessimism can lead to fatalism to wondering why we should go time and money at a hopeless cause and can lead to radicalism to smash the machine or drain the swamp or empower a charismatic tyrant. Surely, although these kinds of responses are understandable and part, public frustration is not just some kind of selfdelusion, especially frustration that runs this deep thats revealed itself in such a broad range of symptoms. Pinkers happy data are not wrong exactly and neither are the encouraging Economic Indicators but if these dont explain training sentiments of our time we should ask ourselves what those kind of 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. They assess our wellbeing on our own but none of us can really experience while being on our own. As exactly in the joints of society at the junctures of individuals, the interest disease of life that the trouble really shows itself. One way to put that point is that many of our struggles seem rooted in relational problems. Loneliness and isolation, mistrust, suspicion, alienation, polarization conveys are kinds of problems we have now and failures of sociality. They fall into a blind spot for a very individualist culture. So how do we explain a crisis of connectedness like this . Some people argue the trouble is fundamentally philosophical and metaphysical that liberalism is failed because it fails to offer us a sufficient vocabulary or architecture for solidarity. Other people say that although traditional measures growth and prosperity might look fine our problem is still economic in a deeper sense. Its socioeconomic. They say contemporary capitalism creates levels of inequality that make it impossible for people to feel like equal parts of a larger whole or believe in legitimacy of our Political Economic order. Other people suggest that external pressures like trade or immigration or internal pressures like racism or identity politics have left us incapable of hanging together. Theres some truth to all these things, surely, they all get something important right because they treat the human person as embedded in a larger hole whether metaphysical or moral or social or economic and see that whats wrong now has to do with the way in which we live out that embeddedness. I think they still are missing something crucial. When we think about problems in this way we tend to imagine imagine our society as a vast open space full of people having trouble linking hands. Of joining together and recovering longing trust in legitimacy. What we are missing although we too were really pulled it this way is a structure, shape for our social rest. A way to get purpose and a concrete meaning and identity to the things we do together. If American Life is a big open space its not a space filled with individuals, its a space filled with these structures of social life. Its a space filled with institutions. 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. In Understanding Social crisis in terms of what they are and what they do to help us to see that crisis in a new light. Thats the understanding really that this book tries to advance. What is an institution . It wont surprise you to learn that there are a lot of different academic definitions of the term. The book thinks through a number of these but for our purposes let me suggest a general definition that draws together a lot of the Academic Work but also looks toward the problems we confront in our society now. Bice institutions i mean the durable forms of our common life. The shapes, the structures and what we do together. Some institutions are really organizations, they have Something Like a corporate form a university or hospital or school or business, civic association, these are all institutions, they are technically legally formalized. Some institutions are durable forms of a different kind maybe shaped by laws or norms or rules but without corporate structure. The family, for example, is an institution, in some ways the first and foremost institution of every society. The talk about the institution of marriage or a particular tradition in a profession of an institution. The rule of law itself as an institution. That they are durable as ascension an institution keeps its general shape over time 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 was distinct about institution is that its a form. In the deepest sense a form is a structure of contour. Its the shape of the whole the organization that speaks of its purpose and its logic and function and meaning. A social form an institution is not just a bunch of people its a bunch of people order together to achieve a purpose to pursue a goal to advance an ideal and that means institutions are also by their nature formative. They structure our interactions and as a result of that they structure us. They shape our habits our expectations and ultimately shape our character as they shape our souls. They hope to form us in the formative role actually has a lot to do with how institutions relate to the social crisis that we are living through now. Let me say a word about that. 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 confidence in institutions. We talk about that its a trend we hear a lot about it. Measures very easy to find and paint a very grim picture. Gallup has kept track of what it calls americans confidence and sin institutions for decades it continues to do it on a regular basis and the trend in those figures is unmistakable. From big business and banks and professions to the branches of federal government the news media academies, the 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 that figure was 87 percent. 40 years ago 65 percent of americans said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in organized religion. 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 percent of americans expect confidence in the presidency last year 32 percent did. Gallup even found amazingly that 42 percent of the public had confidence in congress. That last year that was 12 percent ken seems really high. You have to wonder who are these people who say they have confidence in congress. This pattern holds for just about all the institutions that gallup asked about. The military is the only major exception and we will think about that in a second. The overall trend is really unmistakable. The American Public is gone from extraordinary levels of confidence in our major institutions to really striking levels of mistrust. But what we actually mean when we say that we dont trust institution . I think the answer has a lot to do with what institutions actually are and do. It takes us back to that question of how the form us. Every significant execution carries out some important task in society. Educating children or enforcing the law or serving the poor just providing some service making some product. It does that by establishing a structure toward accomplishing that task. In the process that institution also forms those people to carry out that task effectively and responsibly and reliably. It shapes the people within it to be trustworthy. Thats what it means to trust an institution. We trust an institution when it seems to have an ethic that makes the people within it more trustworthy. Not just a Political Institution when it takes seriously some kind of obligation to the Public Interest and forms the people in it to do the same. We trust the military because its values 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 some need rehab and seems to reward its people when they deliver those. We trust to school because it builds a culture that makes its people devoted to learning and teaching and keeping kids happy and safe. We trust Journalistic Institution because it has high standards of honesty or accuracy in reporting the news and that makes its people reliable. We lose faith in institutions when we no longer believe that it plays that kind of ethical roof formative role. Shaping the people within it to be trustworthy. One way that can happen is when institutions claim to enforce an ethic of responsible at a book plainly failed to do that. Instead shielding and powering bad behavior. There are plenty of his examples in our time but theres plenty of examples in every time. Another related and different way in which institution can lose our trust when it fails to impose an ethic and the people within it altogether. It doesnt seem to see that kind of formation as a purpose. When the people in the institution no longer see it as a mold of their character and behavior but just as a platform for themselves to perform on to raise their profiles to be seen in society. An institution like that seems not to be worthy of our trust not because its failed to earn it because it doesnt seem to seek it to desire it. 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 her institutions as formative but as performative when the presidency and congress are just stages for purportedly political outrage when University Becomes a venue for virtue signaling on one side or another when journalism is indistinguishable from activism on one side or the other when the Church Becomes a political stage to become a lot harder to trust because they are really asking for our trust or just asking for attention. Our time the few exceptions, most notably the military the most unabashedly formative of our National Institution seems 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 mold. It would be strange to trust the platform and we generally dont. That change of attitude is kind of declined in the expectation the institutions should be formative of the people in them is at the heart of our loss of faith in institutions. It didnt turn at the heart of our broader social crisis because it institutions understood as platforms rather than molds stages to perform on more than as means to form and shape our character are less able to offer subjects of loyalty to the sources of legitimacy, ways of building neutral trust. Examples of these kinds of transformations for molding platform are everywhere around us once you start looking for them. In many cases our institutions are being made to platforms not just for any performance but for a kind of performative virtue and performative outrage in that vast polarized culture war that so much of our society is living through. In one of the institution after another week on people who are to think of themselves as insiders shaped by distinct purpose and integrity of the institution they are in instead of functioning as outsiders displaying themselves building their own personal brand as we see now. This is obvious in politics is there any doubt that donald trump sees the presidency as a stage for performative outrage . What exactly is he doing when he treats his displeasure with something in the department of justice is done, for example . The department of Justice Works for him. If he had a sense of his job as shaped by institutional contours, he would direct the executive branch rather than complain about it. Maybe its a good thing he doesnt know he can do that but he could. The president normally would come the sense of his job is yet another stage for the Reality Television show that his life has been for so long. Is there any question at the same time that many members of congress of both parties now run for office last to be involved in legislative work and more to have a prominent platform in the culture wars to become more visible on cable news or talk radio to build a bigger social media following. To use their elected office mostly as a platform to complain about the very institution they work so hard to enter. They see that is what their voters want. Theyre always performing for their core partisan audience. Our two Major Political parties now really anything other than two platforms for Performance Today have a function other than displaying and elevating narcissist . Do we even remember what the rules a Political Party is supposed to be at this point . We look beyond politics too, think about the profession of journalism as an example. Its institutional strength insistence on informative integrity. On a process of editing and verification that helps us to be sure that what it provides is reliable. Today a lot of elite 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 on twitter right now you find a lot of professional reporters effectively d professionalized themselves. Journalists inclined to complain about how donald trump is behaved in office should consider whether chucks behavior relative to what the presidency is might be unnervingly similar to the behavior of a lot of leading political journalist relative to what journalism is. Both are playing out a selfindulgent celebrity version of the real thing and in both cases that renders them less able to do their appropriate and very important work. You can see the same pattern in the academy, rat