it means all americans. people of color, women of color, and we are thankful and grateful for this book. and were thankful of you for being part of this conversation. go get the book. read about it. we look forward to seeing you again. ... ... >> so, author yuval live. >> in 2020. what's your assessment of the united states. >> guest: that's a wonderfully broad question and challenging, a moment of crisis, hard to

deny. a spring that has been dominated by public health cries that's still very much with us. we're 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 we're going to rise to a challenge like this. i think you can't help but see it as a time of crisis but because it is a time of testing, it's also a tame for us to think about america's strengths, what we're good at as a country and how to build on that to address the enormous problems. >> host: how did we get here? >> guest: well, that's 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 there's 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. that's 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 baby-boomers, the generation of people born between 1946 and the early 1960s. these are still today although they're 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 they've have has had been a presidentun 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 50-60 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 baby-boomers 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 you'd find a guyedded society, very little confidence in the institutions, dealing with some economic and cultural forces that are very much like what we're 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 it's important not to misperceive the norm. 1950s, early 60s america was a very unusual form of our society, and we shouldn't simply take to it be the norm. in some way we're 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 can't 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 that's 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 can't 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 don't talk about what america will need in 204. sounds impossibly far away. it's 20 years from now. as close to us as the year 2000 and it's exactly what we should be thinking but no politics. i think there's a need to get ourselves out of the rut of the nostalgia for mid-center 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 i'm other conservative. in fact a lot of my work has been about that question, what that means or what the left-right 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 they're being oppressed by institutions that impose on them an oppressive status quo. there's 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 i'm a conservative. >> host: in your most recent back, which just came out this year, time to build, it's 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, self-indulgent or reckless, reinforcing exactly the vices that undermine a free society. >> guest: that poock isal about the nature of the social crisis that we're 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 we're 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 there's 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 they're 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 ocasio-cortez 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. they're 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 that's been happening in the presidency as well. president trump ex-emmy identifies that more than any -- ex-emmy 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 don't 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? that's 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 today's 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. we're not just at the whim of social media or the internet. we use them in these ways because that's what we're 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, there's 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: that's really the subject of that book. it's 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 left-right 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 left-right debate in our politics. the left and right are not factions in the sense that each just speaks its own good. they're 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 country's 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: what's your background you came to this opinion of view? >> guest: well, my background, i'm 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. bush's 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 i'm 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 uh-oh came to my conservative views, that's a mystery. the some has to do with influences around me growing up i'm sure mitchell father was a

conservative, but it also ultimately reaches to some mysterious level that we never fully understand about ourselves. think just how we come to have the fundamental views we have is often a little bit mysterious. but i am impressed by institutions that enable people to thrive and that means i'm very impressed by the american social order, but the american constitutional system, and i think we can draw a lot out of our history to help us with the sorts of problems we confront. so i'm a conservative. >> host: what are the nonnegotiables in our social compact? >> guest: well, i think those are stated in the declaration of independence. we believe in human equality, human dignity. that's why people on city street now because we all saw on video just a gross violation and abuse of a human person who ought to be treat as an equal and wasn't. that's a nonnegotiable fact about americans. whatever our political

inclinations, and we can differ a lot, we all believe that we are all created equal, that we're all endowed with basic rights that is correct government exists to protect the rights and i think from there on we have a lot of debates how much should government protect the rights, what should the institutions look like, what would be most effective. the basic ideals written in the charter 0 of our our society their nonadoptables of american politics and i think they're true. >> well good, afternoon, and welcome to booktv on c-span2. this is our monthly "in depth" program. we have missed you the last couple of months and glad to be live again with author and scholar, you val levin. he is the author of five books, beginning with tyranny of reason which came out in 2001. imagining the future, 2008. the great debate, which we have discussed, came out in 2013. the fractured rub, renewing america's social contract in the age of individualism, came out

in 2017. and finally his newest book is a time to build, from family and community to congress and the campus, how recommitting to institutions can revive the american dream. we want you to participate in our conversation this afternoonful there's several ways to do that. we'll begin with the phone numbers. (202)748-8200 for those luff in the east and central time seasons dial in. if you have a question or comment for dr. levin. (202)748-8201 for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. you can text in a question or comment, please include your first name and the city and state that you live in so we can get that context. (202)748-8903. we also have all our social media sites, instagram, facebook, twitter,@boost this handle. we'll begin tabling the calls in

just a few minutes. >> host: doctor, back to great debate. what's been the lasting effect of the french revolution in france and in this country? >> guest: well, the french revolution was really one of those core epical moments in the history of the west and it's affects have been absolutely enormous. it unleashed the modern wave of revolution for good and bad. and it created the sort of frame, the shape of modern radicalism that shaped 19th 19th century politics and many ways still with us. it is important to see that the french revolution is not where modern liberalism was been. the libbal society broadly -- i don't mean liberal in left but liberal in our way of life -- began in the united kingdom well before the french revolution and

it's important to remember the american revolution happened before the french revolution, not after and i think of the american revolution as the great turning point in human history, the great birth 0 of a truly free society that has made possible the achievements of the dreams of liberalism. but after the french revolution, the politics of every subsequent free society, the politics of our society, has been divided over a core question about social change. how do we change? by building on the past or change by breaking with the past? that basic question, which in a lot of ways is the distinction between left and right when you come down to it, became the defining organizing question of the politics of not only france but britain the united states and the democratizing country and every prosee site today and before the friend revolution you look at english politics and find parties divide over the question of whether it is the

run or parliament that should have power are that was changing by then already by the end of the 18th century. after the french revolution the question that divided left and right was essentially the question about to the french revolution, the question whether the purpose of politics is an ongoing constant revolutionary process that ultimately will liberate it entirely from the burdens of the past or the purpose of politics is a process of gradual change to address problems that keeps us connected the roots of western civilization and enables to us make the most of our inheritance. the former is progressive, the leathers this conservative view, and the french revolution has a enormous amount to do with why that is the nature of the debates we have. so what a hugely consequential event and many ways continues to be. >> host: fit its with your descriptions of edmund burke and thomas paine, paine is an

uprooter and burke is a reformer. >> guest: exactly. edmund burke was whig cannot tory. he came from the reforming party of english politic but his fundamental disposition was gradual reform and reform is not revolution. it almost is offer inside opposition to revolution, says we need to change gradually so we don't lose what we built up and what works and we can change what doesn't work. paine had much lest patience for that gradual change help said the status quo is unjust. need need to start over. we know me principles that ought to god a free politics throw outeat what we got which came from an age of oppression and start over. paine was a mucher radical revolutionary and both views are contained within the american revolution their american revolution was a conservative and a radical revolution. you can see it even in the declaration of independence which begins by stating very radical principles, true principles i think, but then guess on to state that prudence

demands you don't just overthrow governments for shallow ropes and it goes on to list the reason wides the americaned want to revolt those ropes are very conservative. they've been denied their right as englishmen, denied recourse to the institutes that have been theirs. the american revolution, unlike the french which was a purely rat cal break, the american revolution kansas progressive and lane recallism and contained the entire framework of the politics that would become u.s. >> host: (202)748-8200 in the east and central time seasons, (202)748-8201 in the mountain and pacific time zones. yuval live yep any cam to elizabeth in new jersey. hi, elizabeth. >> caller: hello, how are? >> host: just fine, ma'am go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: ism want to ask, how does he explain the disconnect

and complicity of conservatives in the senate and the congress in how they go along with an amoral and self-serving do and divisive, self-absorbed dictator like the president. things are not adding up. just wondering what he would say about that. >> host: thank you, ma'am. >> guest: well, thank you for the question. i'm a conservative who is critical of donald trump. i don't think he is fit for the presidency. wasn't my choice, and i don't think he has done will by our country. that said, i think that the fact that our politics is as polarized as it is is an important part of the reason why so many republicans in our politics have stuck by trump even as he has done things they disapprove of or should disapprove0. don't them president trump is a conservative and i don't think hose has advances the kind of world view set conservatives should wand to see advanced but

we reached a point where each party define thursday other party as the country's biggest problem rather than thinking about the real challenges we have. we think of one another as the core problem to be dealt with, and that kind of intense partisanship means that ultimately you prefer your own party over everything else, and i think republicans have found ways to rationalize and justify too much of what the president has done, too unwilling to criticize him. i wouldn't criticize everything he has done. think he has appointed good judges and i think when it comes to regulatory reform and other things he has done well. but generally speaking, and especially on the question of character, which i think is absolutely essential in executive leadership, our president should be people of character. i am enormously critical of president trump and i think more republicans ought to be. >> host: your former boss it was reported this morning in the "new york times" may by supporting joe biden. >> guest: yeah. think that's unclear.

he hasn't said who he is sporting exactly. think george w. bush whatever you've might think of the policies he pursued and i generally liked his policies -- is a man of character, and i got to see him in action when i worked at the white house and i would say what struck me most in that it that time he lived always with the weight of responsibility of the presidency on his shoulders. he knew that his decisions mattered, that lot depend on them, that they had to be taken seriously, that he owed it to the country to approach his job with the gravity that it requires, and that is clearly lacking in this president. there's just no way around that. >> host: back to the great debate, quote, politics is a negotiation of the principled differences in response to particular needs and events. party politics should not be looked down upon as unseemly. tom mat burke argues. on the contrary it is the means by which real intentioned

politicians join together as honorable come patriots. >> guest: yeah. edmund burke is very interest. one of the few people who makes a positive case for parties. there's always been a pragmatic case for parties, necessary to organize the politic but very few people have made an expressive philosophical case for parties and thomas jefferson it another and would happen forward to happeningses in difference parties but both sought what parties enable us is to do form brad -- broad coalitions. we think of parties a divisive and breaks is down but parties broadly understood have a strong incentive to form broad, not narrow, coalitions. if you're the democratic party and have to run candidates in alabama and in oregon, you have to build a pretty broad tent if. if you're the republican party and need to do the same you have to find ways to appeal to people

in broad terms, in different circumstances, in different situations, and that is a healthy force in our politics. it forces compromise and it forces cooperation. ultimately the institutions we require in a free society are ones that force evidence us, that comb pel to us accommodate each. other why the congress this essential core institution of tower system dolls the congress exists tocome pel accommodation, always going to be fundamental diss in politics. people disagree. never going away. the question is how to handle that, live with that and the answer in a fro society is compromise and you want institutions that force you into the tent, that require you to compromise in order to achieve anything and i think burke it right, parties month on the lost of institutions. >> lynn from maryland. go ahead,. >> caller: well, i am not -- i'm sort of all my question but what has been said in the first call

and by mr. levin. the first caller said dictator. if all the people who testified and so forth were right about the policy, absolutely right, they did not have the right to say to the president that you must follow me because i'm right. and as to character, long ago -- [inaudible] -- talked but the march on washington. the guy organized the march on washington this main guy, not the philosophical guy, king king king, they said about him -- [inaudible] -- said about him, him, -- [inaudible] -- better watch him so he doesn't grab a

little boy. better watch him. i am not into character. i'm not into trump coming into the house and so forth. one more -- gore vidal. said about luther martin, the best lawyer in the united states, drunk ore sober. he -- drunk or sober. trump that not only violating the constitution, not violating any law, not violating anything, if he curses, he doesn't -- that's fine with me. >> host: all right, we'll leave it there. a little bit about political character. >> guest: look i think it is important to say, donald trump is not a dictator. he is the elected president of the united states. i disagree with him and he doesn't have the character it takes to be our president but he is our president. elected, not violated the constitution, at least not in

any obvious way can he see. there are debates about some of he things he has done and to the debates will be had in the courts for all the objection is have for him i think the arguments you hear that have is an authoritarian or a dictator are not well-founded. if anything donald trump is an unusually weak president who has not used the powers of the presidency in the way me might have in the crisis like this public health crisis and other circumstances. so, i raise before some objection is have to him and have many more put i domestic think it's a dictator and that word should not be thrown around. >> host: patricks from minnesota. a suburb of minneapolis. hi, pad trick. >> caller: good morning, guys. excellent conversation. i've never read any of mr. levin's boycotts but -- books but i find the subject matter extremely relevant now, then and forever.

my question was in reference to inequality which is a word the protesters ever using and or -- to advance maybe one side in the past side ten years or -- since trump has been elected, has the great society done us an injustice in not making us great when we inaugurated this in the late-60s, when we addressed this subject matter once before, and have we watered down the expectations of our public schools that has short-changed he these generations in order to compete? >> host: patrick, before we get an answer from y what has the last couple of of weeks before been for you you're 20 miles

from the minneapolis. >> caller: we ever a privilegedded community on the outskirts of minneapolis. i am originally from wisconsin. i moved here 35 years ago. i went to community college. i barely got through high school. minnesota gave me a chance. i flourished in school, graduated ten years later and have contributed to the community and have green -- grown with it. this has been a real disappointing time to see this fall in front of me. i'm in my mid-50s. i got off to a late start. but i have a spring in my step that i really care about the future, i have a good, strong sense of history from the past, and i volunteer in all the communities locally and i work with addiction communities specifically that have suffered

from the covid crisis, but this has been a very challenging time. i was fearful for the first time that it would not end. >> host: recent headline in "the new york times" is this. how minneapolis one of america's most liberal cities struggles with racism. >> well, is it's product of these policies that have not worked? i'm not saying i have -- other options we have not explored and the character issue that mr. levin has brought up in reference to the possible selfish of group think and third thought processes, it's me now and my market, instead of collectively our community and our state.

>> host: thank you. patrick, let's bring yuval into this. thank you for spending time with us on booktv. >> thank you for that and all you do. eat people like you who make this country great and ultimately it's that it kind of engagement and concern and involvement in local community that can strengthen our society. i think first of all, on the question of the great society, the great society was many things. it was on the one hand a set of large public programs that were intended to create a new kind of social safety net in our society, some of those have been effective, some less. so we're paying an enormous price for them financially, fiscally in ways that will force us to rethink how their structured, like method care and medicaid and that sense we -- medicare and led okayed and we have been left with a tremendous bill to pay that has to be thought through and is a burden on the future.

the great society was a kind of social vision and is connected in our minds and in reality to the civil rights revolution in some ways. the civil rights bills preceded the great society. the key ones of the 1960s, 64 and 6 5 came before -- [loss of audio] -- on the civil rights front and on the question of basic human equality in our society and the struggle against racism. we still should see that real progress has been made but the kinds of problems we deal with now are not of the same scale and character as the sorts of problems that the civil rights movement con tend with in mid-century america, let alone in prior decades and centuries in our society. a lot of work remains to be done, but we live in a time when that murderous police officer

who killed george floyd on at the streets of minneapolis was violating the law and will be tried for murder. there was a time in our society when the law would have been behind he cop and when our society would not have valued the lives black americans in the ways that now our laws do so that also our people will. so, progress has been made and i wouldn't say that's been a failure. but ultimately the progress hat needs to be madees moral progress, which is not the same thing as social progress. moral progress has to be made anu in every human heart. this is a reason -- anu in every human heart. the problems we have are rooted in the human heart, rooted in the imperfection of the human person and that means we need to be formed and educated and be shaped to be moral people. we require engagement with those moral ideals that can give us the right kind of form to be free people to respect each other, to acknowledge each other's core dignity and that work had to be done every

generation. we can change social institution asks structures to make that work easier and to treat people equally under the law and i think we've made a lot of progress on that front but there will always be a need for us to put before the rising generation the core principles, the core ideals of western civilization and of american society. that job simply will never spend there's no way around it. the fundamental work of forming free people is the work of every generation on behalf of the one that follows it. al. >> what is your take on minneapolis? very progressive city that prided itself on minnesota nice and high morals. this is not the first high profile incident in that city. >> guest: there's no question that having liberal politics is not a solution to basic social and moral problems. these arise everywhere and in some ways i think there's a

there's a way in which the power of the police unions and other structural institutional factors make it very difficult for the police department in a mace like minneapolis to enforce its own rules and make sure its officers treat the public with respect and dignity so that when these problems arise they can be more difficult to deal with in a liberal policy in some way is, not every way. i just think we should be ready to deal with evil anywhere. it is not a function of politics in a simple sense. these things happen. we should be glad they happen less than they used to but should not just accept that they'll always happen. we should deal with them and make sure we're engaged with one another as citizens, make sure our institutions are formed around a core commitment to the equality of every person, regardless of race or regardless of anything and that's work that has to be done in liberal juries

jurisdictions and conservative ones. >> host: your recent book a time to build from family and unit to congress and the campus, how recommitting to our institutions can revive the american dream. stewart in seattle, you're on with author, yuval levin? >> hello good, mentioner to beth of you. would like to know how i as a nontrump supporter but more on the side of burke than on the side of paine, allbone when i was younger way on the side of paine. appreciate the sentiment but as an older person i appreciate burke more. how can i make -- talk to people who are ardent trump supporter whos seem to be resist extent to compromise, seem to be absolutely opposed to a common cause unless you're totally on that team. the partisanship has gotten way out of hand. >> guest: yeah. i agree with you about this.

i think in both parties the unwillingness to compromise is now the core problem of our political life. it's note fact there's a left and right. it's not the fact there's tasks between left and right we may like or not like. it's the fact they're not willing to see each other as conversation partners and partners in compromise. the life of free society is compromise and what porlarization has meant in the poll together the 21 inch under is a loss of the sense that compromise is the only way that pile ticks will function. it's happened for a vote of ropes. one reason is the fact we haven't really had a sturdy majority or minority party in our politics in some time. when you look at american political history, political scientists use the terms the sun party and the moon party, and most times in our politics there's a strong party, might bell the democrats might he be the republicans or the whigs

before them and-and that strong party reigns for a time and there's a minority party but funks that he minority party and forces compromise and uses its leverage at the margin asks then things change and there's a political re-alignment and the minority becomes the majority and you good through a period like that. we have now lived since the middle of the 1990s in a period where power shifts back and forth and we do not have a party that we could say is the majority party of the country or the minority party of the country, and one thing that means is that each party always thinks it can win everything at the next election and i can't. every new president who has come into office since 1992 has come in with control of both houses of congress. with his own party controlling both houses of congress. that means parties shift back and forth and each party is right to imagine that if it just waits this out then after the next election it can control everything and push things in its open direction. now of course when that happens,

hose majorities are never very big or strong and you don't get very much done unless you are willing to compromise, so that the major legislation we have seen in this century has tenned to be quite partisan and therefore has tended not to endure and have a lot of trouble being sustained as we see power change. so i think that's taken away the incentive that each party might have to deal with the other. at the end of the day civility just means acknowledging that the people you disagree with will still be there tomorrow and the political dynamics we live with now are such that you might imagine they won't be, that another election and we win it all and that's it. whoever we might be. so, i think helping people see that ultimately political progress only happens in whatever direction you care about, by compromise with people you disagree with, is the way to advance these conversations and as a practical matter sometimes that just means working at the local level or the state level, where we still do have real

compromise happening if live in the state of maryland where we have quite conservative republican governor and a pretty progressive democratic legislature and they work together because they have to. at a practical level there's no other way. i think that kind of recognition is just more on the surface of the state level and at the local level, and it means we should be channeling more power to state level and local level e level where problems can get resolved in a constructive way until the national politics recaptures its proper form. >> host: if you can't get through on the phone lines send us a message via text or social mideast media, the text up in 202 -- text carefully -- 748- 8903. include your first name and city. and larry in florida texts in: what can an individual do to make politics better?

>> guest: thank you for the question. it is really the question, of course. and it's very much the question i try to take up in the latest book we talk but, a time to build. i think it has to begin where we are in the institutions we each are part of. those might be community institutions or civic or religious or educational one, political institutions in our own community, or might be national politics. and we have to ask yourselves, how we can work together with others to advance the common goal and to offers, give my role here the responsibility i have, how can i do better? that kind of small question is the path toward larger reforms the book does lay our larger reformeds that are necessary reforms of congress, the party system, some necessary reforms in the academy and in the professional world, the book talked about the media, civic life, but before any of those reforms can happen people within our institutions have to recognize that they are, we are, part of the problem and that

means we first of all have to see that all of us are subject to this tendency to think of our institutional responsibilities as optional and to think of our institutions as platforms for ourselves, and taking ourselveson that misimpression, helping ourselves be a force for good is the beginning of change. it's not an alternative or substitute for institutional reform about an essential prerequisite. >> host: one of the other big institutions you tackle in a time to build is the education system, both higher and lower, and posts on ore facebook page this comment: are educational institutions are failing to educate our children for a prosperous future and worse, dividing the country as progressives have shaped curriculum. that literally teaches our children that we are a country dominated by injustice. these include the kids out on the street now.

>> guest: well issue think this is a very important point. it's crucial to see our education system in america, the k through 12, primary and second dear schooling is is ear enormously decentralized. a system where control of crick him is held at the local -- curriculum at the love level and different places can do different things. that's okay. the way to live with diversity. just places where ideas will be talked about i don't like much. places where ideas will we tabling but i like but other people don't and that helps in america. i think that the point that she gets to about how to teach our history, is enormously important and i'm very concerned that a version of our history that denies us recourse to the best in that history is now being pushed on a lot of children and a lot of college students. any history of american life would have to take very seriously and teach fully the history of racial oppression in

our society which ises a old also the history of our society and have to take seriously and teach fully the history of the struggle against racial oppression which is also as old as our soave side and which offers us a lot to work with in trying to do better as a country. it's not the case that the american story is simply a story of failure on this front. and to deny students access to the model and example of a frederick douglass or abraham lincoln or martin luther king is a tremendous failure of responsibility. we have to teach the good with the bad. have to try to offer a full picture and that full picture offers the rising generation a huge amount to work with in making our country better. from the core ideals and prims of equality that have always been the ideal of our society, even though, to people who have disease voted their lives to that struggle in ways we can learn from and be inspired by, and i think efforts like the 69

team project that would just deny that and say there's only the down side and dark side, fail the young in a way we should not abide. >> host: from your book a time to build, in the chapter, campus cultures, quote, harvard and yale, america's first two universities, were created as conservators for puritan orthodoxy and train men of religious to move the larger community to repent of its sins and seek redemption. this northerly aim is a driving purpose of american higher education, now largely shorn of its religious roots. this often looks like classroom instruction and campus political activism that demand of the larger society a kind of mass mass repentance for some grave collective sins. >> guest: that chapter tries to make sense what has been going on american college campuses in the last few years and does that

by trying offer a little perspective about the mixed character of higher education, and that mixed character has us been part of higher education. we demand a lot of thing of universities, give people the skills that need for the american economy, we expect them to fifth students access -- give students access to deepest truths and highest and most beautiful things in our civilization and exact them to be engaged in trying to improve our society to be active the trying to change things. all the things have always been part of american higher education. the idea that campus activism ban in 1960s is absolutely untry. campus activisms asuggest was actually the original purpose of the american university. harvard and yale were created to advance moral change in american society. now the nature of the moral change that is now being advanced on these campuses is different but the character that, the sense the purpose of higher education involves that

kind of social activism is not new. there's always been a very tense balance between these different aims, between the aim of giving students skills for economic life, the aim of giving them access to ahigher truth and a kind of liberal education, and the aim of changing society. the american elite campuses have fallen out of the balance where now they lean much to heavily the direction of a kind of campus activism that isn't about learning and teaching so it's not fundamental academic and you have seen some displays of ill liberalism on american college exam buses that are troubling. a closing off of knowledge and teaching toward throughout that's right one a building up of that knowledge. i think the answer to that is not to pretend we can have higher education that is completely devoid of political activism. nothing to do with the larger society. theft absolutely not what we should want or expect. but i think the university has to answer to the academic

idea:which means everything it does should be done in the form of teaching and learning, and that is where some elite schooled have been disconnected from the purposes and i think the cultural of liberal education, that sees teaching and learning as fundamental to human flourishing has an enormous role to play in bridging the culture of campuses back into balance and in providing a rising generation of students the kind of enormous advantage that higher education can give us. >> host: another contemporary headline, ivanka trump rips canceled culture also she is dropped as commentment peopler at witch staff state university students proficients. >> the idea that students should hear from people that they or the professors don't agree with this campus is no place for opinions other than the kind of accepted mainstream consensus

progressive views and a lot of time that view is advanced as though it were form a rebellion against the establishment but it is the establishment. cultural progressivism now owns all of our institution and it's eenormously important that college students hear dissenting views it's not just intellectual diversity for at the purpose of diversity. shouldn't just hear anybody and everybody and there's a different betweens hearing from people who play some significant role in our society and just hearing from people who are there to stir up trouble, but cancel culture broadly understand as it's been used to keep our conservative voices, ands, academic voices, people who have ideas but come from a different place politically than the mainstream of professors and students, is an enormous problem on the american campus, and is a betrayal of the academic ethic.

>> host: claude in oregon you have been patient. where is tieden valley. >> caller: tygh oregon. >> host: where is that. >> caller: oregon. >> host: where in oregon? >> caller: central oregon. >> host: all right. go ahead with your question or comment. ... i don't need to be thanked. i consider i've volunteered during the draft, i consider what i did was for my country. okay? and i viewed today, a political system that looks like a tug of war which is

basically the same side of the coin, just two faces it doesn't matter which one lands on top they all went to be on top. i think it would be better to divest ourselves of all political parties in the united states and just require people to do their job. that will be changing the paradigm. i don't think i would elect someone for their views they don't represent me, there's not one politician in the united states or any state represented me. no one in the state of oregon represent me they represent themselves. >> host: alright,. >> guest: there really is no way around represented of politics and democracy there will be differences in society about how to proceed and how to govern ourselves what kind of laws we should have, how we

should respond to changing circumstances. we have to ask ourselves how do we resolve these differences? how do we make decisions? we've got is a system for legitimizing that work coming as close as we reasonably can to allow people of different views to be heard and for allowing the views of majority to be alternately advancing ways and don't trample on the rights of the minority. it does not work perfectly to put it mildly, there are a norma's problems with it. that's the purpose of the system and very often that is what the system achieves. it is unsatisfying, that is true. one of the things to me is essential to why i am a conservative i don't expect the world to be satisfying. think they're going to be contradictions and paradoxes and problems that don't go away, we cannot fully resolve. we can mitigate them we can try to address that we can make the most of them. this world is not a perfect world. how to live with its

imperfections how to address problems to confront us with in ways that are legitimate and respect each other is the challenge at the core of the design of our system of government. i think parties aren't important part of solving the problem of finding ways to represent different views and to protect minority voices. i think our institutions of government at the state, federal and local level are a part of that. the fact we are still dissatisfied at the end of it, that his life. we are much less dissatisfied as it would be under a system did not take our views as seriously as this does does not make an effort to represent us. there are surely ways we can do better and i am open to those. there are a lot of ways we could do worse. i think we should be grateful for our system of government for a cheesy underachieving what it's allowed us to achieve. >> host: what's different operators.

>> guest: i am a notorious longtime c-span consumer ice hero a lot of time spending listening and hearing. mr. levin said something about the scale changing the character has not changed. he made some reference to georgia floyd's murder and the reaction to it. what you don't understand is the reaction to george floyd's murder is not just that it was videoed we been watching videos of police abuse from rodney king coming forward. what we sought this time was quite suprem supremacy at its worst.

good all-white police officer murder and unarmed, disabled black man casually while looking at the camera. i want you to think about that why you so you see on the streets today. now, that's just the tip of the iceberg. we have systemic institutional discrimination that goes on every day. the worst part, the murders bad from talk about in the workplace people don't see every day. one of the problems in that regard is eoc i will leave that on the side. i want to talk about this equivalency with the created with the current republican party the democrats. we are looking at the evolution. i want you to understand what were looking at now is people being left by newt gingrich, pat buchanan and those.

it came to a head during the obama administration to know what i'm talking about sir without meeting? stuart going to finish her thought and they will hang up and we will let yuval answer. okay during the first inauguration a plan was put together for republicans, do not cooperate at all in that regard, that led to the tea party and now we have donald trump republicans or the ultimate manifestation. see what alright aubrey we're good to leave it there thank you for your thoughts, yuval live in let's hear your response. >> guest: i thank you for those thoughts and we did see

was white supremacy and utterly unacceptable both in character and scope that's why people are out on the street at its widest perfectly clear we have a lot of work to do in the country on this front. it is essential that we turn our attention to it. i completely agree with him. i think as far as characterizing the polarization is a function of just one party, that strikes me as a symptom of polarization rather than a design diagnosis. it simply unquestionable that both parties have moved to the edges of the last two or three decades. it has been driven by various kinds of changes in finance reform its cultural changes around politics, by social media and other things people live more and echo chambers. there simply less cooperation across party lines is no doubt the republicans were part of that and democrats in the bush air and the trump era are part of that we can point to

different people who play different rolls in that process. he think we can agree the process has been a huge problem for politics in our country and that our recovery of politics it's oriented to cooperation that is oriented to compromise, not under some dream we are all going to agree but by accepting the reality we are not going to agree and therefore we have to make bargains and deals and that's what politics is about, giving each party some of what they want and turn forgiving the other party some of what they want. it is absolutely essential to lay politics works. but look there are some issues that are nonnegotiable as we talked about before. the issue of basic human quality the respect for person in a matter of races nonnegotiable's not a partisan issue, it's not an issue we can ultimately allow to be put to the side so politics can take up other things the fundamental question of human rights and equal dignity.

nice to be front and center. >> host: yuval live in what about systemic institutionalized racism? >> guest: we have to see that racism is both a function of the attitudes of individuals and the arrangements and organizations we establish to structure our politics. i do think we have made real progress in fighting some of that institutional racism there is less of it than there was. that does not mean we can stop the efforts. it doesn't mean that the work to be put down one of the things we see in the videos these things were happening and there phones around to take pictures of it to deepen a norm is problem is to up as a fundamental challenge in

american life. i think there's no question that is one of the ways in which our country has a lot of work before it before it can claim to have reached the ideals we aspire to. it is important to see we aspire to those ideals we want to reach that. yet there is a very, very wide shared aspiration with our society and that's a good thing. the aspiration alone is not enough. >> host: gregory in kansas city e-mails in, agreed our system requires compromise how did we ever get to the point where compromise is unacceptable? this attitude seems to be more common on the right. >> guest: as i've said before he got to that point in part by it cultural and political evolution which our politics, especially the national level has come to be fought around a set of almost symbolic issues were each party essentially treats the other party as a country's biggest problem. that's the case the problem to

be solved is the other party you really can compromise and the solution to probably get red of the other party we have practical problems of the ritz of quality racial recognition, standing with prosperity, the opportunity that is available to the rising generation, whether it standing in the way of the life he went to have together those problems have be taken at their public policy and that could only be achieved by a process of accommodation and compromise in our political institution. think our political culture has been transformed in a way that understates and undermines the potential of compromising accommodation. it happens largely at the national level, and look, to say this has been caused by one party is a symptom of the problem. it is not a diagnosis of the problem it's not proof its cost by both parties. there is an enormous amount of

contempt for the right on the left. that contempt is deeply destructive making very, very difficult for people to take seriously the reality that ultimately were going to make progress by working together. there is enormous amount of contempt for the left on the right. that lease to the same problems has to be addressed in the same way. we are not going away people you disagree with are still going to be here tomorrow you need to think about politics as a way to reach arrangements and combinations with them to live together with them as neighbors and fellow citizens. not as enemies they are not your enemies. see when you're watching book tv on cspan2, television for serious readers this is our monthly in-depth program, this month as author and scholar yuval live and we are concentrating on his three most recent books, the great debate that came out in 2013, the fractured republic, renewing america's social

contract and individualism in 2017 and "a time to build", his most recent from family and community to congress and the campers have recommitting tour institutions can revive the american dream. charlie and roslyn heights, new york. charlie were on the air. >> caller: i like what you're saying what it came to morals, we do not value character in our society anymore, i don't know we ever did. i usually tell young people, the most important thing in life is be a good decent person. that's the first thing we should be. that is not valued in our society. but everything also was talked about, we have a problem in our society that's not mention he has not mentioned the fact we have a concentration of

wealth and communication with that wealth. you have a corporate media. i think that is controlling the debate we need to talk with one another we need good civil debate and i don't hear it. you know? i would love to hear a debate between two americans who have opposing views. there aren't only two views, there are many views, you know? we need to get them out, debate and talk with each other that's not happening i think with the concentration of wealth, that with a concentration of the media with the wealth, i think has something to do with it. >> host: alright charlie thank you very much. yuval live in i think most of us think that would be a good idea to hear and have a reasonable argument et cetera. >> guest: yes i certainly think that is right. there are all kinds of reasons that have to do with the

incentives to confront the media that doesn't happen very much and why we do have things we call debate they tend to be a little bit more like people reading talking points and engage in a screaming match and 12 people lined up on a cable and cable news panel. i think some of that is got to do with an assessment of the public's attention span which is just unfair to the public. as c-span knows are people willing to listen and follow them what's happening our public life. think about it seriously and engage with that in a deep way. i think there are also some deeper economic and cultural incentives that have shaped things the way the caller suggests. it's a complicated question in the mid century america that our politics looks back to so much there is a much more concentrated media architecture we really had three television networks, two or three national newspapers that had enormous cultural

power shaped a mainstream incentive around themselves. things were much more concentrated than they are now. we've had a fragmentation of the media because of the internet and other economic pressures where there are many, many more voices out there now. it is often difficult to tell who to trust what to believe and if they're actually following any kind of standards we can take seriously. there's certainly a greater diversity of voices. at the same time there is a greater, not lesser economic concentration were economic power in the media world is very heavily centered around a few large corporate owners of media companies. i we have got enormous economic concentration in general that's grown over the past 20 years. i think things have to be understood in tandem somehow. ultimately, breaking up

concentration is not simply good in itself it has to be up part of the society where there are dangerous concentrations, wrote monopolies have to broken up. think the situation with the media is much more complex than that we're dealing simultaneously with the fragmentation of voices and consolidation of ownership. >> host: yuval levin this is a text from california i thoroughly enjoyed reading your book, the great debate and of philosophy class last fall it open the door for me on human nature, institutional roles, hereditary politics and went to make reform. my question for you is how we can eliminate unhealthy populism from the politics of the left and right and get the general public to trust career politicians who i believe have the experience and wisdom to work out. >> guest: thank you very much first of all it's great to

hear about that book being assigned and college classes and especially good to hear from someone who benefited from that or got something out of it. i think the question of populism which someway has has always been a core question in american political lives, of course is very much live in the contemporary politics now is one way to think about the condition of her institutions. i think we don't really face a choice between elitism and popular is in. the view that the people have all of the answers and should just be empowered directly in the view that only some elite have all the answers and it should have the power the answer that is embodied in the american constitution, the view that somebody in the constitution is and no one has all the answers and our politics has to arrange itself around the reality that no one has all the answers. that means no one should have all the power. the system gives the people some power, quite a lot of course to elect public

officials, exercise power over them through the mechanism of elect oriole leverage. give certain kind of elite institutions significant power, judges are a distance from the public the president is not as directly answerable as member of congress for example, we have competing power centers, competing layers of power separation of power, the logic of all of that it seems to me begins with the premise that no one knows everything. that being the case, our system has to put different power centers in tension with each other that for change to happen there has to be broad agreements that endures over a long period so that it is sustained long enough to create a majority in congress, a president who will support it, general public sentiment that enabled to endure the accepted. that means change happens

slowly. that slowness can be very frustrating. think that also means there's a role for populism and politics it's important there answerable to the public and take seriously public concerns and priorities. it also means we have have respect experiencing governance. there is such a thing as expertise and public policy. for example i am not a supporter of some populous ideas like term limits in congress. i don't think the people who create problems in congress are those with the most experience. seems to me somebody is going to have to have the power and that kind of system it might as will be people who are answerable to the public and up for election versus a permanent bureaucracy from a structure that's much less answerable. it's a matter of finding balance in our system is pretty good about that on a whole. >> host: phil is in portland, oregon. highfill. >> caller: thank you for taking my call with kareem

abdul-jabbar's racism is like dust it's everywhere the world until you shine light on it so america should take this issue and deal with it the rest of the world would follow now my question how do we make this an independent body again my suggestion is to take away from that in the president and also for the body to renounce the dedication in writing they will renounce their political affiliation in their decision-making. there it is. >> guest: will meet comes to the courts we face the challenges of every other institution we need a balance between accountability and

independence. so to argue for a fully independent supreme court makes sense everything that will always make better decisions in our political system which is answerable to the public. there's also a huge practical challenge of how it could actually be fully independent, who are these people who will have that much power without accountability and who will decide is on the court? i think our system reaches a compromise that makes sense. judges have lifetime tenure so they are not answerable to elections or to elected officials once they are appointed. but they are appointed by elected officials who are answerable to the public i have been open to the idea lifetime tenure on the supreme court something that could be rethought i'm looking at 18 year terms for example for justices who reported at 50 insert for 40 years on the

court have a little bit more to change the makeup of the court. in supreme court justices once they'd served after 18 years ago to the appellate court still have lifetime tenure as judges but on the supreme court that would only serve a period of 18 year so essentially every president is two or three appointments and you would have a little bit more of a balance between our democratic politics that are independent judiciary. i think that is a workable idea and ought to be considered, the framers certainly did not imagine that anyone will be sitting on the court for 40 years when they created lifetime tenure. but the balance between independence and accountability is never going to be perfect. >> host: next call for yuval levin comes from jim and marilyn. go ahead jim. >> caller: i have a question for mr. levan and i like to preface with a comment to lead up to the question.

i don't see myself as republican, democrat or independent i've voted jim voted both ways for the last 45 years. what you just mentioned, mr. levan, about the contempt that the democrats have for the republicans, i believe from what i have seen in keeping up with current events began in 2000 because the democrats feel they were robbed of the white house by the supreme court. that continues all the way into 2000 tens with the mira guard lynn appointment or seat with obama. the senate republicans holding that up. they feel they were robbed of that seat. and it continues on into 2016 for they are going to believe they were robbed of a second seat because hillary clinton, had approximate 3 million popular votes more than

president trump. but in all those instances, the constitution is what ruled out, not their emotions they believed they were robbed. my question is, for mr. levin, is your characterization of president trump's character. how do you put that up against beginning and the 2016 with the exoneration of hillary clinton and the e-mail situation, but then directly into crossfire hurricane at the end of july and continued with as we know now the illegal fisa warns of which there were fourth, one original and three renewals. and morphs into crossfire razor also in the general flynn. >> host: okay what gym there's a lot there to building a pattern there yuval levin, what's your take? >> fica good prosecutor.

first of all i think the story of contempt begins earlier. you can see the left contempt for the right and the robert bork hearings in the 1980s and earlier than that. you can see the right and left the polarization of politics did not just begin then i certainly agree it has worsened in the last century for some of the reasons he mentioned in a number of other reasons. on the question i don't defend hillary clinton's character either. i don't think we had a good option in the 2016 election you had two candidates are both under fbi investigations at the time of the election completely unprecedented. the question of the president's character is not a legalistic question about all of these particular kind of scandals. it's a question of how a person thanks about the responsibility has about how he treats people and speaks about people. i do think there is a kind of

narcissism with trump's way of thinking about the world leads to a bullying attitude, i think some of the attitude he has with immigrants and others, it's just not something we should see in our president. i don't think it is ultimately about the particular standards and how they get worked out i think it's about the man's character character matters and there's no way around it. ultimately there is an exact real cost and we see that the crises were dealing with now you can never get away from character. >> host: whenever we have an in-depth guest on we asked him or her to list some of their favorite books. here were yuval levin's choices. alexis de tocqueville, democracy in america, adam smith sediments. george will, statecraft and soul craft, and two more crisis of the house divided in

george eliot, tells about those last two books. >> okay, some ways this is a list you might expect from a conservative sum may be less familiar. harry chaplin's book crisis, house divided is a very in-depth study of the lincoln/ douglas debates. he was a political theorist and philosopher teacher from many years with a college in california. it's a book he wrote in 1959 that is kind of a close reading of the lincoln/douglas debate he tries to put them in an extraordinary way and amazingly successfully the philosophical context of classical, political thought into articulate lincoln's way of thinking about morality to show the depth of the issues at stake in the lincoln/douglas debates.

throws that it shows the depth of debates with american politics at the depths of its crisis. sin extraordinary book i recommended to everybody it still in print and well worth your while. middle marks, see looking at the list it's the only work of fiction on that list, which just speaks to my weaknesses as a leader i think. it's a great english novel written by george eliot. he is the pen name of marian evans, one of the great english writers of the 19th century, that is her best novel but i haven't read all of her novel so maybe i shouldn't say that published in 1871 but it is set in the 1830s and english midlands. it's really at epic novel and gets isn't usually important issues of family, community, status of women how social change happens.

also a great story. i was introduced to it in graduate entering graduate school who laid it out for her students as a way of thinking about the human condition. think it is really that is a wonderful book. sue went and according to yuval levin he is currently reading robert putnam's, the up swing and jacobs the year of our lord 1943 which are? >> guest: the upswing is robert putnam's next book he sort of note of bowling is what he wrote in 2000 describe the breakdown of america's civic institutions, the rise of loneliness and individualism and extreme form in american life with the century dawned, he is one of the great social observers of american life. this book, upswing, is supposed to be out this summer has now been delayed to the fall. it actually looks at a subject

we took up a little earlier, the pattern of communitarianism and individualism over the life of the past century describing a path that he says shows a coming together and a pulling apart. look at all because of social indicators, not only civic engagement, also immigration, cultural diversity, also economic and equality in the condition of many of our institution to find in america that was an tensely individualistic at the beginning of the 20th century that mobilized in the direction of solidarity in the middle of the 20th century and then had to pull apart. now we are at another extreme, think it's going to be very important book i think it will be out in a few months i guess. alan jacobs is a professor of literature and baylor, texas.

he's written some wonderful books about intellectual life and theology and politics with society. this book, the year of our lord, 1943 was published a few years ago is about a group of thinkers in the final years of the second world war who tried to envision and imagine what post world war order would look like. it's a group biography really gripping the done something i would recommend to everybody. >> host: as putnam's bowling alone hold held up? >> guest: yes and no. i think it met with some criticism at the time, which i think in some ways was right. which is that part of what it described as the demise of american civic life was more like the evolution. people were doing different things together so the old clubs and civic organizations definitely did get weaker but

people found other ways to join together i think the fundamental argument he made that her country was headed in the direction of isolation and a dangerous excess to individualism was right. the problem became worse over time with polarization, growth of technology, that social media and other internet technologies somewhat bring us together but do that by keeping us apart. many of the trends he points us to have in fact not only been shown to be right have gotten worse over time. >> we have a half an hour left with our guest this month on in-depth, yuval levin is our guest you want to participate in our conversation will also scroll through the text number on the social media sites

michael in latham, new york good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon thank you for having me on and enjoying the conversation here. a few observations we are a nation of debaters compromise is a wager arrive might also like to interject that a gentleman who wrote a book on popular -ism so that politics and politicians will not save us i agree with him on that. my question is although compromise is essential to solutions, how can, and why

should will one compromise their court believed in something they believe runs counter to it? case in point, the abortion issue. sue went thank you michael, yuval levin. >> what it actually means by compromise. if it means people giving up on core belief that think it means getting part of what you want on a practical policy situation based on your core beliefs ultimately were forced to decide which are willing to give what most matters to you. there certainly issues like abortion very difficult to compromise. but actually do compromise even on those things with practical matters when we face a choice that's an all or

nothing choice we strive to turn it more like a give-and-take. taken over by the courts in our country has been less open to this type of compromise. there's a lot of people in the pro-life side would say abortion should be determined in the states there'd certainly be a diversity of outcomes if you did that. some states would have very liberal abortion regimes and some less so. we certainly would have more restrictions and we have now in the united states has the most liberal abortion regime and the western world, almost in the entire world with practically no constraints whatsoever. that is much more extreme than any european society than most other countries have. i think a lot of people who have very strong views on the moral question, would be open

to a more moderate laws that allow for their views to be respected to a greater degree it ultimately protects life. think compromise about give and take it's not about giving up on your core principles it's about applying those practical questions in ways that allow you to tell the difference between gaining ground and losing ground therefore allowing you to gain ground as her give-and-take is possible. >> caller: it's good to see c-span almost back to normal all they are not in the same room. my question is, we saw this last several weeks to examples of extreme police brutality. one against mr. floyd, and the other went against a gentleman in buffalo. who did not seem to be videoing anything and was

brutally shoved down their like 50 police officers walk past him one kind of looked down at him and was told to get away even though he was bleeding, how do we look at that? we assume floyd is racial and it was horrible and brutal because he's black, another gentleman was white. i think there is a huge racial problem for there's also a problem with just simply badly trained police that seems to be endemic all through the country. in many places even liberal places and the liberal places have been getting much more demonstrating and protesting than the conservative places have. so, thank you for taking my question.

>> guest: yes i purchased that point i think some of overseeing is simply the tendency of power to corrupt which is undeniable and the reason why there always has to be ways of keeping power in check and making people in our society accountable, so that certainly is racial and some is abuse of power. it's also important to see these are of course exceptions in the practices of police in america. there are many police officers of all races and backgrounds who do enormous important work to keep us safe every day they have to be respected too. even as police training practices and social institutions more broadly are reformed and transformed to address the problems we have. it is a very complicated problem. i think there is no question that the abuse of power is a constant threat. whether it is done in the name of racism, whether stunned

simply as a form of abuse, it should be totally unacceptable. some of things we are learning and away this week but we have known for years this kind of abuse exists. and it needs to be addressed. they can't be shoved to the side we can't wait for this to passing it back to normal, i think this has to be a moment that changes some of the things we think about with policing. as i said it has to done in a balanced way, always in a way that respects the need for order, for police, a real need, especially in some of the communities where we have seen some of the most significant breakdowns of order in the last few weeks. it's an enormously complicated social challenge. it really calls on us to take the problems our society faces seriously. never forget giving people power means they have to also be watching the use of that power to basic principle.

we cannot address those failures without rebuilding those institutions. >> there's a tendency in moments like this i don't mean just the past few weeks. really the past few decades in our politics. on the left and right in different ways to say we just burned down the institutions. get them off of us and be liberated from them. the struggle against the establishment the struggle against the elites, all of these things are understandable they are driven by real frustrations there are some very real problems but we need functional institutions and we even need responsible, respectful elites who could run those institutions. we need the police we just do there's no way around it we are human beings. that means we need power to be exercised in a responsible way

we need to demand more of them. it is not enough to say we have to get rid of them. ultimately our society cannot function without them. the challenge is harder than that. the challenge is how do we renew and revitalize and hold them to account? not just how do we get rid of them? >> dan and massachusetts please go ahead with your question or comment for yuval levin. >> thank you and doctor levit it's great to talk to this afternoon from massachusetts. i want to first give you little background about myself. first of all i've been a student of demographics for years i've also wrote recently on march 4 the daily news and article about morality in america. the way it fits in here we all think about her missing troops, the mias part of like to apply those letters to morality in america. my statement to you i like your comments on, is i kind of

had this mantra is been been part of my dna for years. i will kind of laid out to go something like this. the second the world goes up with the lack of vocations, civilization goes down and morality. i feel, want your comments on that statement in my closing remarks are, i also want to say to you that education or let's say education of morality in a proper sense would solve many of these problems people have been calling about in our country. this is a beautiful country we live in. thank you. >> host: yuval levin. >> guest: i think every effective form of education is education morality whether it's learning history and a way that inspires us to be better at your better people rather that inspire us for us to lose faith and hope in our country whether it's education

that's directed specifically come explicitly to form character and helping to shape us. i think ultimately the formation that her institution perform for us is moral formation, one way or another so if they are deformed they leave tomorrow d formation. that is why the health, the standing the character of the institution in matters enormously. you know, i think the evolution is a complicated story in america. in some ways we have seen a decline in religious practice and affiliation. i think it other ways of seeing an increase in the demand and hunger for moralism in our public life. that is the hunger that has traditionally been answered by religious institutions. it can be answered that way again if those institutions approach society and the terms of contemporary problems by offering themselves up as solutions to the sorts of challenges we see now whether it's challenges of isolation loneliness whether it's racism

and injustice. i think there is in a norma's opportunity now for the institutions in our society who were directed to moral formation to rise up and offer themselves up as respectable, responsible formative institutions. i think we don't see it enough or think it's a moment that demands it. when i imagined how we might make our way forward for me or how we might revitalize our society and make the coming years better than the last few years, that kind of emergence of unabashedly institutions doctoring themselves up for ways for each of us become better from the local interpersonal level to the nationalist absolutely essential. >> host: yuval levin you use the word devotion in your conclusion and "a time to build". >> guest: yes devotion is required first to be properly

committed to her institutions and society. it's what we want to think we all look for things we can be devoted to, admire, respect look up to and therefore devote ourselves to. ways we might be made better by making ourselves more like the things we admire. rather than just promote ourselves or put ourselves out there on a platform on our own performing. we really want is to be part of something something that is worthwhile, something that helps improve our country and world. and so are sources of devotion is one of the things most in need now. we don't think so because we buy the language of kind of easy-going cynicism in our society. but in fact i think there is an enormous hunger for proper objects of devotion. we need to do perceived that way if it happens. >> host: text message from jon

would doctoral event please comment on political correctness. >> guest: political correctness is a term used to describe some of our mainstream institutions demand fealty to certain political tenets. generally tenants of the left of progressivism. as a price of admission to american life you cannot be a professor if reviews not the view of the minority on trap majority. you cannot participate in professional institution you can't be a journalist. i think it is a problem i think it's part of the problem we confront is liberalism and a lot of her institutions and society. but you know, there are also ways we, on the right exaggerate at times and can imagine were being held back because other people have conspired to keep us back. but in fact i think we have to be better at offering ourselves as an alternative, as a way forward for america.

and offering up a more attractive, more appealing, more engaging and inviting form of what the right has to say i think often it's inclusive doesn't seem to be speaking to everybody in america. when that happens we should not be surprised at not attractive to everybody in america. some inclination is how can i do better, how can we do better before imagining any problems we have is a fault of others. >> host: have you ever been canceled on a college campus? >> no, i have not. i've spent a lot of time on college campuses. back when that was still allowed you could travel go somewhere and actually see people in person. i hope to get back to that when it is allowed again, when the pandemic eases. and i certainly have seen instances of disorder around some political events. i also happen to be at uc berkeley about three years ago

now on a night when there were riots in a fire on campus and all kinds of things. they were not about me, thankfully, i've seen that happen i know people who have suffered quite serious forms of that kind of canceled culture but thankfully i have not myself. >> host: factor book, time to build. at the heart of this pressure is what has become known as identity politics on college campuses seems to amount to an acute emphasis on group identity, structural power relationship among different racial, sexual social economic camp caesar understood and oprah wrestlers and oppressed. >> guest: what i am describing there is an effort to try to understand contemporary american progressivism as it presents itself on college campuses in its own terms and in the best terms possible. i think there is a way of understanding the core to distinction between the left

of the right. getting to those roots in anthropology we started with today, by saying the right tens of think about political challenges as order versus disorder or civilization versus barbarism. the left thanks of them is oppressor and oppressed. in a that is because the right, by the beginning social order is different people are highly imperfect and we enter the world. in the think social order is the hardest thing to sustain therefore the necessary prerequisite for anything else he might do in our society. the left tends to think oppression is the core social problem so everything has to be understood in the power relationships in different groups. there's obviously truth to both of these. it does seem to me ultimately in order to have justice you first do need to have order and you have to worry about social order so we can have the kind of society that's then capable of also worrying about justice. i think this division, this

disagreement between left and right runs very deep. it's a very serious debate. both sides have genuinely serious arguments on how to make our society better. and in that sense i think it serves us well. steve went roger in sarasota, florida go-ahead police. >> caller: yes, doctor live in recent mention of term limits provoked a question in my mind. icy term limits as a possible way of breaking the cycle of the predominant role of money and our political lives. with federal legislators, the voting of the mass majority of their time to raising money for reelection. and being paid huge to.

[inaudible] >> host: roger apologize you're cutting in and out there but i think we've got the gist of the term limit comments he wanted to make. >> guest: the question about term limits is what exactly would be a solution? i think what you end up with if you have term limits in congress is a very powerful permanent staff took bureaucracy. people who don't leave, who build up the knowledge and experience over time. and then members would come and go. they would kinda be the playthings of the permanent bureaucracy. i think that's worse than the situation for the people who are there for the long-term are also the people who are answerable to the public. i can certainly see the case for term limits in the sense some problems we have seem to arise out of a corruption that follows from people being in these jobs were too long for the trouble is simply term limits would create a worse problem a much worse problem

and maybe worse in the same problem we have now which is we still have people who were ultimately corruptible and corrupted over time because a been there forever and they see themselves as permanent infrastructure of our politics except those people would not be elected officials they would be lobbyists, they be staff, people around the system. i don't think that would be better. i certainly see the problems but i don't think term limits our solution. >> some would call it the deep state when they? >> guest: there is a way of calling up the deep state. and so therefore, i think it is important the people that remain overtime be elected. i also do think there's real value in experience there is such a thing as being a legislator there is such a thing as expertise to legislation and we do what people in congress who know what they are doing. i don't think we should underestimate the value of

having people who have been around a while, establish themselves, i think in that way people are less in the grip of the power of money. they've built up their own constituency in their own authority over time. so on the whole, term limits would not service well. spivak before we run out of time i want to read this e-mail from patricia in keyport, new jersey. isn't the continued growth of the federal government making the outcome of each election more important? federalism is not taken seriously by the powers in d.c. we no longer have the freedom to experiment with different ways of doing things, the supreme court has power none of the powers in vision people are still self sorting and moving to states and areas where like-minded people live. can our republic survive such

self segregation? >> as a number very important questions i was a first of i very much agree we have less and less trust in our government. same time having more power to the government and resources certainly does seem to me that one way forward is by increasing the amount of power and authority that flows through state and local government federalism offers us a way to turn our growing diversity into a strength rather than let it become a debilitating weakness for democracy. i think government is more functional relational outboard governing to happen at the state and local level. so it's a matter of constitutional principle and just as a matter of basic practice let's how can we

express their federal system we see that as result with the pandemic which is hit different places differently so it has require different places to respond differently. i think we have been well served by our federal system and that crisis. i think it's something that can service wellin a lot of other areas. >> host: jim in florida good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon can you hear me? >> host: were listening. >> i like to make a comment if i could and a question for doctor live-in. first of all i am native from northeastern minnesota tracing my ancestry for generations to those who settled the land both in southern minnesota's farmers northern minnesota as people i'm sorry the homestead act of abraham lincoln gave them land. center quite a bit about the

culture i worked in a working-class home were part of the labour party, and he was a young man who wanted to go into politics irony b is you're just incredibly sweet i'm now a conservative, reagan conservativism as it were. i just find it incredibly ironic that the ultra liberal city and state would have this explosion of violence in horrible murder of this black man seems to me the irony is set it off. slick comments right minnesota roots i could go on about racism the culture of minnesota to give you some real insight but i will spare you that. my question to doctor live-in is when he said earlier said his family integrated from

israel i think he said when he was in eighth grade and he obviously is a jewish american. does he explain what is his explanation of the key allegiance of the jewish americans by and large very average rate to also liberal, socialist i would even say socialist marxists in american politics. i just think it is crazy. stu and i we've got the point let's see if yuval levin cares answer that question. >> first thing that minneapolis is tragedy more than irony in a terrible tragedy that our entire countries rising up to respond cheaper in the second question, there certainly deep roots in terms of ethnic

politics and a tendency towards political radicalism among american jews. i would say there is also a fairly large sum growing segments of orthodox jews in particular so my community is diverse too. i think the argument the left and right ought to make about people in america should reach beyond the bounds of those communities speak to all of us to americans as a signal nation's coach our highest aspirations or ideals both parties are at their best when they do that. i certainly think that's the kind of politics we should look at. >> host: yuval levin some of were to buy one of your books which one would you suggest. speak to you can't pick among them is like a parent with their children but the one that is so best is the great debate which is red and college courses and has been translated into a few languages that speak to people

most. but i was a think people should read them all. >> the other two we have been talking about in our time with them is the fractured republic as well as his most recent, "a time to build", yuval levin for the past two hours is been our guest on book tv we greatly appreciate your time. >> thank you very much thank you to c-span. : : : >> the author thereof great debate, edmund burke, thomas paine and the birth of right and left. the freaked republic and a which was published this year. >> host: so author yuval levin t