Television for serious readers. Edit down we kickoff the weekend with yuval levin, the authors most recent book is the the fractured republic renewing americas social contract in the age of idividualism. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] hello everyone. Thank you for joining us today for this lunch. I have never had the microphone too low for me. My name is oren cass, a senior fellow here at the Manhattan Institute and our speaker today is trying to and founder and editor of National Affairs magazine. Its a real privilege for me to introduce yuval levin today. Is now standing mentor and role model to younger scholars such as myself and really all you need to know about yuval levin is that he has the wisdom not to use twitter. I should probably say more about him that he does not tweet, so less impressive, but more relevant today, i would say better than anyone in america he is at the funny what conservatism means and showing its relevance to modern society and applying its principles to the challenges of today and now he has written a book doing just that, the fractured republic renewing americas social contract in the age of idividualism. This book is a next regnery, schmidt just as a diagnosis of our societies maladies. Probably not since the dream and the nightmare that we had such a thoughtful and thorough account of the dramatic changes in society, causes of those changes in the ultimate consequences of them. But, even more notably he did not stop there and for me, the most important and may be overlooked message of the book is the importance of presenting a positive vision for americas future and it actually brought me back to my four careers and Management Consultant and if you will forgive me a moment of consultant speak i would like to quote someone a something written by my former college. People get excited by imagining themselves on the beach or ski slopes, not by reading the travel itinerary. Change requires leaders who can inspire people and provide them with internal compass to align their subsequent behaviors, decisions and actions. This vision often works more through metaphors and stories in fact end of the sizes the defamation as well as the journey. Successful change begins by asking, what is our beach. So, maybe that sounds obvious, but it is universally ignored in business and politics and we have no shortage of writers telling us what is wrong and have great things used to be and why things used to work fewer of us some focus legislative reform Going Forward. I would like to myself in the last group and i think that work is important, but even for me yuvals message was a wakeup call. To pass reform start not with legislative conference, but with a picture of how things can look, not with an eye teary, but with the beach. Yuval forces everyone to think about the beach and a provide a compelling one of his own. Many people will disagree with his particular vision, but i really believe he will force more debate to occur on those terms and that america will be better for it. So, here to tell you more, yuval levin. [applause]. Thank you very much for that, oren cass, i appreciate that enormously in the thought that i would be a mentor to you is both scary and wonderful, so i appreciate it and thank you especially to the Manhattan Institute for inviting me to talk and for everything you do. Him a grateful consumer so much of what am i does both in publishing and National Affairs and justin reading what you publish and learning from it. I have never before thought of what im doing as described in a beach and from now on i will. Thank you. That said, im going to start with something a little bit more depressing than a beach. I will speak just briefly give you a little bit of an overview of what this book is and what it has to say and then hear what you are interested in what you are thinking about an and what you take away from what im trying to offer. I will start with the book, which is the simple fact that american Politics Today and in some respect American Society is a drowning in a kind of frustration or at least anxiety. We are living through what seems to be very uneasy time that is reflected in the tone and tenor of our debates and the kinds of candidates that are rising and filling to voters in the source of concerns you heal your people expressing. If you pool was into our political conversations enough to conclude that america is deeply frustrated. At first glance its not particularly hard to say why we should be frustrated. Its not that hard to explain the attitude or for one thing, our copy has been very sluggish since the 21st century began and not only during the Great Recession or after it, the strongest year of Economic Performance in the century was 12 years ago, 2004. Even that year we saw growth that barely reached the average of any of the prior four decades. The sluggishness of the economy leaves people feeling like theyre running in place, which is part of the frustration that people feel. At the same time the century began with the worst terrorist attack in our countrys history and has left us with a sense which has not changed or vetted that is the hope we might of had four the somewhat peaceful postcold war order in the 90s has been shattered. Our partisan politics at the same time has been polarized and intensely divisive. Our cultural battles of it very sensitive subjects from stem cells to marriage and sexuality to religious liberty to National Identity has been a fight at a fever pitch that has left everyone feeling like they are besieged and offended at the same time and key indicators across the lines between politics and economics and culture, things like family breakdown and inequality have also pointed in the wrong direction for longtime. And has stood in the way of mobility and of the american dream. So, the opening years of the 21st century of even americans on reason to worry, but theres also plainly been more to the frustration of this time than just a straightforward response of circumstances. Our problems are real, but the weight we talk about them is often disconnected from reality so that the kinds of diagnoses and prescription people offer up seems only to contribute to the kind of this orientation that certifies our public life. When you listen carefully to what is being said in our politics you realize disconnected often in a particular way, our way of talking about her problems now is it dominated by the nostalgia, powerful and widely shared sense that our country has lost ground, that we have fallen far and fast from a peak that a lot of americans can still remember. Will give you an example i think will strike you as familiar, not because you have heard this the tickler wine before, but you hear it all the time. How often have you heard a politician in the last few years Say Something like this many people watching tonight can probably remember a time when finding a good job meant showing up at a nearby factory or business downtown. Didnt always need a degree. , titian was premuch limited to your neighbors and if you work hard chances are youd have a job for life with a decent paycheck and good benefits and vocational promotion maybe even the pride of senior kids work the same company. That world has changed and for many that change has been painful. That happens to be president obama in the state of the Union Address a couple years ago, but it could easily be a most any politician in either party at this point with a little metamorphosis on cultural cohesion of that time that everyone so mrs. Him out of it a have been mitt romney in the last election with more explicit emphasis on low inequality of that time it couldve been Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren and often is with poor grammar and less coherence of more anger it can be donald trump are now. Calling for rolling back liberalization immigration and recovering what weve lost. America just isnt what it used to be. Thats the theme of contemporary american politics. It seeks to a public anxiety that often comes down to a question that is asked in english, what has happened to our country. You know, its not a bad question. Something big and significant surly has happened to our country and it is less cartoonish form the nostalgia that we see in todays politics is understandable. Of the america that is exhausted and miss politics this is so much, a nation that has emerged from the Second World War, Great Depression and evolved from there with an exceptionally unified cohesive. It had at first an amazing confidence in big institutions, Big Government and big labor and big business managing the nation together in meeting a need. That confidence is stunning when you look at what people were saying and thinking in midCentury America from her vantage point. Americas cultural life midcentury was not much less consolidated cook it was dominated by a broad traditionalist moral consensus, religious attendance was at a peak and families were strong, birth rates were high, divorce rates were low and in a wake of a work in which most competitors literally burned each other a contrary to the grout the United States to him in the world economy, which were well allowed us to offer Economic Opportunities to all kinds of workers with all kind of skill levels. Most immediately after the war, the consolidated nation started a long process of unwinding, a fragmenting. Over the subsequent decade with verizon and struggles against racism coincided with a massive increase in immigration and its import to recognize the latter, which we dont think about the scale quite enough. Because of immigration restrictions theres been an that should have been enacted in 1920 midCentury America had a low level of Cultural Diversity until those were lifted in the 1960s. In the 1970s census the percentage of People Living in america who had been born abroad was at an alltime low of 4. 5 . Today, its back near an alltime high bomb of almost 20 and that is part of what is happened to our country. Meanwhile, key parts of the economy, some were deregulated to keep up with rising competitors and our labor market was forced by the pressures of globalization to specialize in higher skilled work that has diminished opportunities for some americans with lower levels of education and in politics a very unusual midcentury elite consensus of important issues gave way by the 70s to renewed divisions that have only beginning sharper and chopper sense. In what area after another america in the immediate postwar years was a moderate model consolidation and consensus, but through the decades that consensus fractured and by the end of the 20th century this fracturing of d census grew from confusion into polarization, polarization of political views, Economic Opportunities, income of family patterns and way of life. Week grew less conformist and more fragment. All of this has make gains were america, which we should not overlook in prosperity, personal liberty and Cultural Diversity and technological process, really just an option of choices in every part of my. Overtime its also meant a loss of faith and institution, loss of social order and structure, loss of National Cookies and art security and instability for a lot of workers of cultural and political consensus and those losses have piled up in ways that often seem to overwhelm and have made our 21st century politics distinctly backward looking and unhappy. Conservatives and liberals emphasize different facets of the source of changes. Liberals tend to treasure the social liberation, growing Cultural Diversity, but to a meant that economic in not about [inaudible] social instability, moral disorder, breakdown of families and other institutions in the troubles news changes are all tied together. Liberalization of the left celebrates the fragmentation of the writer left and vice versa. That set of the forces liberalizing and fragmenting, diversifying and fracturing functions of the essential driving force of American Life cynthia and of the Second World War, individualism. In very broad terms the first half of the 20th century a few the Second World War was major going consolidation and confusion in American Life as our economy industrialized, government grew more centralized , culture became obligated through truly mass media and National Identity and cohesion work for valued above in the belgian diversity work in those years a great many of the most powerful forces in our country were pushing every american to become more like everyone else in the country that emerged from world war ii was highly exceptionally cohesive. The second half of the 20th century and the early decades of the 21st century have marked in age of growing the consolidation, that the culture became increasingly barricaded and diverse that the economy gradually diversified and in some respect deregulated and individualism have come to be held up above conformity or National Unity and these years a lot of most powerful forces in our country have driven people not to be more like everyone else, but have driven each of us to be more like ourselves. Mid20th Century America, especially 1950s and 60s stood between these two distinguishable period and for a time they were able to keep 1 foot in each. Combining dynamism with cohesion to extraordinary degree. That kind of straddling cohesion and diffusion really was a wonder to behold, not surprising we idolize time and miss it. It offered as a stable backdrop for different kinds of liberalization be it towards cultural liberalization or for your economics, but that liberalization now has done its work in our country, our society is its result. We are a highly individualistic diverse fragmented country, economically, politically and culturally none of that is about to be undone. We will have to solve the problems we have as that kind of society, both are strengths and weaknesses are functions of the past that we have traveled together and will now have to draw on the strengths to address those witnesses. This in one sense is what has happened to our country, the essential challenge of the politics of the 21st Century America. Had to use the advantages of a diverse time manic Dynamic Society to address disadvantages of a fractured and insecure society, but if that does not sound like the question our politics is asking itself now its because it is not. Our political culture is not been very good at grasping the challenges we face are the strengths we have in tracing them. Its instead been overwhelmed by nostalgia, by desire to reverse the process of liberalization diffusion as transformed our society and so whether in economic terms to the left or cultural terms of the right to recreate a consolidated centralized consensus driven society that we were not that long ago. The First Step Towards a constructive point for century politics would be to see the reversal is not an option and we probably wouldnt want to do it anyway. Instead, we have to think about how to address the challenges of dissolution and diffusion, challenges like a breakdown of the family, loss of worker security, growing polarization. By making the most of strengths like diversity, like dynamism of specialization pick the question could help point the way towards the next set of construction political policy debates, not this year, apparently. But, when our politics is finally ready to face reality. How do we use are very fragmentation excels as a strength . For all of our troubles in this Election Year i think conservatives ultimately are actually will position to offer a plausible survey answers to that question. Using our diversity and fragmentation as a tool of problemsolving would require an approach to government that problem solvers throughout our society rather than hoping that just one in washington could get things right. It means bringing the dispersed incremental bottom up approach to that you increasingly seeing every other part of American Life. And approach the salts problems like any people lots of options and letting their choices drive the process. Division of problemsolving is not with the social democratic ideal to the left looks like that idea looks more like the industrial economy, but this more distributed decentralized vision of problemsolving is what conservatives often have to offer and how the modern postindustrial accounting works. Its also the logic of federalism of the Constitutional Order and logic is articulated by the best traditions of our civilization. Italian revitalized conservativism could be a tool of modernization of revival. Of that kind of approach is what conservatives are proposing where we come at you, the Manhattan Institute and others of the most active over the years thats a School Choice looks like. Thats what the conservative approach to healthcare looks like an conservative ideas on welfare or Higher Education looks like. As those kind of examples with suggest this sort of bottomup approach has been championed by conservatives in some areas were longtime though with limited success against progressive welfare states, but as old progressive model exhausts ourselves the time is growing ripe, i think, for new conservative approach to make its case more boldly, familiar arenas