Yuval Levin is director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and Editor in Chief of National Affairs magazine. This is our third conversation on this podcast, and comes as Levin is releasing his third book, "A Time to Build."
"We lack the grammar and vocabulary to talk about what is breaking down, and so cannot even begin to do something about it. We look for diagnoses in the realms made visible to us by our assorted sciences of society, but the troubles we find there are not sufficient to justify our despondent mood. Something has gone wrong somewhere else, in some invisible realm, and we have been straining to perceive and describe what it might be," Levin writes in his new book.
The theme and cause of institutions is something we have been discussing since mid-2017 on this show. You can listen to that first conversation here, and to our second from 2018 here.
One of his most valuable insights is the concept of platforms and molds. This is the point that for too many of us, institutions have become merely vehicles for us to use to promote ourselves, rather than objects worthy of devotion.
Now if institutions hold only marginal value, then perhaps we shouldn’t be discussing the possibility of devoting ourselves to them, and in some cases sublimating our own egos and brands to larger institutional goals.
But the entire point of this podcast has been, in fact, to explore the notion that institutions are in fact indispensable, and to better understand why that is. Levin has played a crucial and deeply influential role in this exploration, for which I'm grateful.
Outro music: "Song in My Head" by Madison Cunningham
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Yuval Levin On His Indispensable New Book "A Time To Build"