Deny. A spring that has been dominated by Public Health cries thats still very much with us. Were facing now also a social crisis that is as old also our country in some ways, the struggle for racial equal and human equality. But then also is very much of this moment, and forces us to confront challenges our society has had trouble with in recent years. This is a time that makes us wonder how strong our institutions are going to prove to be, how were going to rise to a challenge like this. I think you cant help but see it as a time of crisis but because it is a time of testing, its also a tame for us to think about americas strengths, what were good at as a country and how to build on that to address the enormous problems. Host how did we get here . Guest well, thats an awfully complicated question. Our country has always tried to strike a balance between the dignity and equality of the individual on the one hand and some form of strength of community on the other. Every free Society Faces the tension. Our society has in the past half century really emphasized the individual, emphasized liberty, emphasized freedom and diversity. And that is brought some enormous advantages and benefits but theres another side to that coin and that other side can look sometimes Like Division and fragmentation, isolation and can look like alienation and loneliness and we have seen all of that in this 21st century. This has been an era that been mark by some crises, from 9 11 at the beginning to the financial crisis to now, a pandemic. Thats forced to us look to the sources of our strength in ways that have on one hand drive to us think but our history and should push to us look at the future which our politic is is not always very good at doing. For somebody like me who tries to work at the intersection of political theory and Public Policy, theory and practice province politics. This is a time to think but fundamentals to look for ways to draw strength from what has been good but to about the country to demonstrates the problems it has long had and lives with. Host your book the fractured rub you talk but the norm, have we ever had a norm and what do you consider to be the norm in this country . Guest yeah. That is a very important question because i think we live in a time now that has Something Like a mr. Perception of the norm. A moment that is culturally very dominate by the babyboomers, the generation of people born between 1946 and the early 1960s. These are still today although theyre often in their 70s and 60s, the people who are running our Core Institutions, in charge in our politics. With President Trump was born 74 years ago this month in june of 1946. President george w. Bush was born in july of 1946. Bill clinton born in august of 1946. Barack obama was born in 1961. All boomers and the Life Experience theyve have has had been a president un usual version of america. An america that came out of Second World War very unified and having a achieved something great by coming together in mobilization, country with enormous confidence in its institutions, in its government in big business and big labor and Big Government working together to solve problems, and over the course of the 5060 years since that kind of height, we have lived through a fragmentation and diversification. Some is good for people who had been on the margins of minorities for people alien friended from the mainstream but also meant that we have lost that solidarity, that so tee find powe war america and a lot of our politics now is defined by a sense of loss about that. Defined by a sense that the era of the babyboomers childhood was the norm and we have fallen from that. That era was not the norm and if you look at america in 19th century youd find a guyedded society, very little confidence in the institutions, dealing with some economic and cultural forces that are very much like what were seeing now, mass immigration, industrialization, urbanization, and our country has a lot of resources to draw on and thinking about how to deal with a home like this and its important not to misperceive the norm. 1950s, early 60s america was a very unusual form of our society, and we shouldnt simply take to it be the norm. In some way were stuck in that place, regurgitating pat what the boomerred did when they were young. Host the ideal. Guest our ideals are north about one particular moment in history. Our ideals should be about Core Principles, how we treat each other, i think our useddals are written in the declaration of independence. The core fundamental beliefs we are all created equal. Our government begins from the premise, as result we have some fro dom as individuals and are also a strong united society. Those core prims along with the ideals laid out as forms of government and institutional design in our constitution, can lead us can provide us with what we need live through very different kinds of times, very different kinds of challenges. I think those kinds of ideals are we should look to. Our politics cant be organize he about returning to some golden age. That age was not as golden as people think it was. For Many Americans it was very far from that. And in any case, history done go backwards. Our question now should be, how do we become strong for the future . And to me as a christopher with enduring ideals to changing circumstances of thats what our politics should be striving to do and that means coming to term with the circumstances, beg home in 21st Center America and how can be our best selfs, out in how to return to some bygone golden age. The left and right engage in nostalgia that gets in in the way of con truck tough politic. Host i want to read from your book the fractured public. Life in america is always Getting Better and worse at the same time. Liberalsliberals and conservatis insist the path to america of their dreamses easy to see but also that our country was once on that very path and has been thrown off course by the foolish in the or wickedness of those on the other side of the aisle. The broader public meanwhile finds in the results political debates little evidence of real engagement with contemporary problems and few attractive solutions. Guest yeah. That is a description of my frustration with some of the basic dynamics of contemporary politics. Think you see it in both parties. A way in which the Republican Party yearns for social and cultural arrangements of the 1950s and early 60s. The democratsern for the maybes of that time. The fact is america change from that period for good reasons. A period of liberalization that opened up opportunities for people who had been at the margins of our society, and also that created options and choices and economic dynamism in ways we have benefited from. They also did come at a cost and thinking how we address that cost we cant just think but how we go back toen earlier social order. That is not even what conservatives should do. The question is how to apply the enduring ideals to a new situation, and i think we spend too much time thinking pout whose faultit is way felt from some height rather than think how to prepare for the future. Politics today has remarkably little to say about the future. We dont talk about what america will need in 204. Sounds impossibly far away. Its 20 years from now. As close to us as the year 2000 and its exactly what we should be thinking but no politics. I think theres a need to get ourselves out of the rut of the nostalgia for midCenter America and think as conservatives and progresses, a left and right and americans in general about what we want for the future and what we need build to get there. You identify yourself as a conservative. What does that mean to you sometime im other conservative. In fact a lot of my work has been about that question, what that means or what the leftright divide in american politics and the politics of fro societies is about. Begins from an to the polling. My conservativism starts from the sense that human beings are born less than perfect, are born fallen, born broken, born twisted and we need to be formed before we can be free and that formation is done by the Core Institutions of our society, by family and community, by religion, by education, ultimately also by politics and culture, and so those institutions that are capable of that kind of formation ought to be valued, treasured, conserved. They have proven themselves theo be capable of providing generations what we need to be a free society and because i begin from the premise that is very difficult to do, that kind of formation is a central and difficult, i want to conserve the institutions capable of it. People who skrine themselves as progressives at their best begin from a different premise, the premise we are born free but that a lot of people are not free and are not living up to their potential because theyre being oppressed by institutions that impose on them an oppressive status quo. Theres some truth to both views. Which you choose to emphasize runs very deep in your character and your sense of what politics is about. I think free society does need them both but it seems to me that ultimately the conservative view offers what Society Needs most, sense how social order can enable justice. And so im a conservative. Host in your most recent back, which just came out this year, time to build, its called, our souls and institutions shape each other in an ongoing way. When they are flourishing our institutions make us more decent and responsible. But when they are flagging, and degraded, our institutions fail to form us or they deform us to be cynical, selfindulgent or reckless, reinforcing exactly the vices that undermine a free society. Guest that poock isal about the nature of the social crisis that were living through. The previous become, the fractured republic, tries to think in broad terms about the social dynamics, the history led us to the porlarization were living with in our society and this newer book, a time to build, thinks bit institutional underpinnings of the social cite. A social crisis about how we connect with each other, how we understand ourselves as individuals to be parts of a larger whole, crisis of alienation, isolation, not only political porlarization but in the private lives of many people, a kind of desperation that leads people to opioids, to an enormous increase in the suicide rate and i argue that a lot that has to do with weakening on our institutions and with a sense on a part of a lot of people within the institution the purpose of the instation is not to mold them or form them but to serve as a platform for them, to stand on and be seen and build a following or bill their own brand or elevate themselves. I think theres been this kind of deformation of our Core Institutions from politics to the professions to the media to the academy, where a lot of people now think of the institutions theyre part of as existing as platformeds for themselves rather an as molds of our character and behavior, and some recovery of what it means to be part of an institution, to be shaped by an institution, i think is very important to the recovery of our societallift. We see that very powerful any in politics which is so performative, people run for congress to get a bigger social media following and to get a better time slot on cable news rather than to think how to work from within an institution, to change our country for the bet jeer do you write in a time to build that we have seen a powerful additional source of dereliction and dysfunction which takes us deeper toward the core of congress institutional confusion, many members of congress have come to forwards themselves most instant familially as players in a larger cultural ecosystem at the point of which is not slating or publish but a perform tim outrage for a partisan audience. You mention mat matt get as of florida and alexandria ocasiocortez as two people who represent this. Guest yeah. I use them as examples but the problem is much more widespread. We think of our Political Institutions as pa platforms for cultural war performances, and as i say people run for congress to get a blue checkmark next to their name on twitter more than to enact legislation. Theyre trying to do good, but they see the role that politics can play as a platform role, way to put themselves in a place where they can channel the outrage of the voters who got them there, they can perform, they can stand as outsiders and comment about Congress Rather than insiders and act from within congress, and obviously thats been happening in the presidency as well. President trump exemmy identifies that more than any exemmy identified that, the presidency is a stage and the president sees him as an outsider. Talks about the government. Complaining on twitter about things the department of justice does . Rather than murdering himself as the ultimate insider in our system with a responsibility that is defined by the role he plays. That book ultimately argues that to recover something of a functional institutionalism, we have to each ask of uses the question we now dont ask anymore in our politics. Given my role here, how should i behave . And goes well beyond politics. As a maybe of congress as a president how shy behave but as a employer or employee, a pastor, parent or neighbor, given that, how should i behave here . Thats a way of letting our institutional roles form and shape the way we behave in society in ways that might drive us toward greater responsibility, a greater sense of obligation to one another, rather than just thinking of ourselves as standing alone on a platform and acting out a cultural war rage. The logic of social media has overtaken a lot of our Core Institutions and i think we need to push back against that. Host technology has played a role in todays political world. Guest a role, yeah. I think technology ultimately serves the role we want it to. I think the forces here run deeper than technology. Were not just at the whim of social media or the internet. We use them in these ways because thats what were looking for and the larger social process we have been living through has been a function of a kind of liberalization, diversification. In the america we talk but in the middle of the 20th century many the great social forces in the country were telling people to be more like everyone else. Forces of conformity and that felt very constricting to many people. In our time those same social forces are telling everyone to be yourself. Forces of individual liberation, theres a lot of good to that but it also can tear society apart and i think we have to find a balance and push against places where we teach to lean hard and that means recovering solidarity. Host i want to bring your book, the great debate, into the conversation as well, and i want to start by reading this quote from it. The political left and right often seem to represent genuinely distinction points of view and our National Life seems almost by design to bring to the surface questions that divide them. How did we become a country of the political left and right . Guest thats really the subject of that book. Its a work of intellectual history. A book that began as my doctoral dissertation at the university of chicago, and then over a period of years developed into more of a general book. That tries to lochte origins of the leftright divide which has been the subject of my work more broadly and does that by looking through the lens of the late 18th century debate between edmund burke and thomas paine. Ed minute burk throughout to be a father of modern visittism. Thomas paine, an english born American Revolutionary war figure who became a very important figure in making the case for the french revolution to the English Speaking world, revolutionary through and through, and they had an argument about the nature of social change, and that argument encapsulated what a would become the core dinks between the left and right. Begins as i describe my open view, beginning from a kind of difference of anthropology, difference hough it is that the human being enters the world and what we require in order to thrive and flush and be free, and bought of these views are i would say generally speaking liberal views. They belong in the free society. They both believe in democracy, they believe in individual liberty, they believe in protecting the equal rights of all but a they differ fundamentally about what fro society is because they differ but the nature of the human person and that debate, debate how to advance the good, is still the right way to understand the leftright debate in our politics. The left and right are not factions in the sense that each just speaks its own good. Theyre pears in the sense they divided by a difference of opinion but what would be good for everyone. What would be good no society at large, and so that difference is a constructive difference and i think pardon pardon pardon pardon politics partisan politics is necessary. A way of framing and formulating the debates we have about the countrys good and i think it still serves us and the differences between left and right that were evidenced at the enof the 18th century are still relevant and still part of what our politics is about. Host whats your background you came to this opinion of view . Guest well, my background, im an immigrant to the United States, born in israel. My family came to the u. S. When i was its years old so i grew up here. I grew up in mostly new jersey. I went to college in washington, dc at american university, worked on capitol hill some. I went to graduate school at the university of chicago, and then came back to work in the bush administration. First at the department of health and Human Services and then the bush white house. A policy staffer in george w. G. Bushs second term. Then went into the think tank world where my work has real where been at the intersection of what my Academic Work was about, political theory and philosophy, and im now a israel tee American Enterprise institute and i have an article and i try connect theory and practice in politics to help each shed some light on the other, and as to uhoh came to my conse