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 on the june 7, 2020, what's your

assess0. the united states? >> guest: well, thanks for having me. that's a wonderful by broad question to open with and challengen weeing. we are living a moment of crisis, lard to deny. we've been through a spring dominated by public health crisis that with us. we're facing now also so el crisis that is as old as our country, the struggle for racial equality and for human equality. but then also is very much of this moment, and forces us to confront challenges in our society that had trouble with in recent years. this is a time that makes us wonder how strong our institutions will perform to be, how we'll rise to a challenge like this. think you can't help but see it as a team of crisis but because it as time of testing it's also a time to think about what america's strengths are, walt we are good at and how we can bill on that to address the enormous

problems. >> host: how did we get here? >> guest: well, that's an awful complicated question. our country has always tried to strike a balance between the dignity and equality over the individual on the one hand and some form of strength of community on the other. every free society faces that tension. our society has in the past half century emphasized the individual, emphasized liberty, emphasized freedom and tie versety. and that has brought some enor mouse advantages and benefits but there's another side to that copy and that other side can look like division and fragmentation, isolation and loneliness and we have seen all of that in this 21 not century, an era marked by some crisis, from 9/11 at the beginning of it to the crisis, to now -- the

financial crisis to now a pandemic that percented to us look to the source office our strength in ways that have to on one hand drive to us think but our summit should push us to look at the future which our politics is not good at doing. for somebody like me who tries to work at the intersection of political theory and public policy, theory and practice around politics, this is a time to think about fundamentals and look for ways to draw strength from what has been good about at the country to address the problems it's long had and very much lives with. >> host: in your book the fractured republic you talk about the norm. we have ever had a norm? what is the norm in this country? >> guest: that is a very important question. think we live in a time now that has something like a misperception of the norm. we are living a moment that culturally is very dominated by he baby-boomer, 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, the charge in our politics. donald trump, 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 was born in august of 1946. barack obama was born in 1961. they're all bombers, and the life experience they've have has had been an unu-version of america. and america that came out thereof second world war very unified, and having achieved something great by coming together in mobilization, country with enormous conversation 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 has been good, particularly for people on the margins, minorities. but it is also meant that we have lost that solidarity, that so defined postwar america and a lot of politics now is defined by a sense of loss about that. defined by a sense that the era of the baby-boomer's childhood was the norm and we have fallen from that. the era was not the norm. any opinion then 19th century you would fine a divided society viv very little confidence nit institutions, teaming with economic and cultural force very much like what we're seeing now, mass immigration, industrialization, urbanization, and so our country has a lot of resources to draw on and thinking how to deal with a moment like this, and it is 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 ways we're stuck in that place, regur jetting and reiterating a lot of what the boomers did when they were young. >> host: shouldded be the ideal. >> guest: i don't the so. where would shoots be core principles, how we treat each. other they're written in the declaration of independence. the core fundamental believes we are all created equal, our government begins from that prim mess, as a result we have freedom as individuals andles a strong united society. those core principles along with the ideas 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 what we should can do to in

a moment like this, mass my moment. politics can't be organized around returning to some golden age. that age was not as golden as people think it what. for many americans it was very far from that and any case, history doesn't go backwards. our question now should be, how do we become strong to the future. and to me as a conservative that means reaching to the principles and seeing how we can apply enduring ideals to changing circumstances. that is what our politics should be striving to do, and that means coming to terms with the circumstances, understanding our country as is is, being at home in 21st centurymer and thinking how to be our best selves in this time, not how to return to some bygone golden age. the left and right both engage in a nostalgia for mid-century america that gets in way of constructive politics iwant to read from your book the fractured republic. life in america is always getting better and worse at the same time.

liberals and conservatives both frequently insist not only that the path to the america of their dreams is easy to see, but also that our country was once on that very path and has been treason offcourse by the foolishness or wickedness on the other side of the aisle. the broad are public finds in the resulting 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 --s of contemporary politics, and i think you do see it in both parties. there's a way in which the republican party yearns for the social arrangements and cultural arrangements of the 1950s and early 60s. the democrats yearn for the economic arrangements of that time. but the fact is american changed from that period for some good reasons. we went through a period of

liberalization that opened up funds for people at the margins of to site and also that created options and choices and economic dynamism in ways we have benefited from enormously and. that came at a cross and we can't just think how we go back toen earlier social order. that is not even what conservatives ought to do. the question is how do we apply our enduring ideals to a new situation, and i think we have spent too much or our time thinking whose fault it is we fell from some height rather hand thinking but how do we prepare for the future? our politics today has remarkably little to say but a the future. we don't talk much but what america is going to need, say in 2040. 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. think there's a need to get ourselves out of the rut of the

nostalgia from mid-centers america and think at conservatives and progressives, lefts and right, americans in general, what we want for the future and how what we now need to be building to get there. >> you identify offers as a conservative. whats to that mean to you? >> guest: i am a 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 politics free societies is really but. to me it fins from some basic premises, an throw pog mitchell conservatism starts from thesen that human beings are born less than perfect, born fallen or, born broken, born twisted and we need to be formed before we can be free. and that's formation is done by the core institutions of our society, by family and community, by religion, by education, ultimately also by politics politics and culture and those institutions that are capable of

that kind of formation, ought to be valued, treasured, conserved. that's proven themselves to be capable of providing generations of people with what we need to be a fro society and because i begin from the premise that is very difficult to do, that kind of formation is central and rick i want to conserve the institutions capable of it. people who describe themselves as progressives at their best begin from a different premise, from the premise be are born free and a lot of people are not free and not living up to their potential because they're being oprocessed by institutions that impose on them in process if status quo. there's some truth to both views champ you choose to emphasize runs very deep in your character and sense of what politics is but if think a free society needs them both but seems ultimately the conservative view offers what society needs most, sense our social order can also enable justice. so i'm other conservative?

y your most recent book that came out this year, time to build, our souls and our institutions shape each other in an ongoing way. when they are flushing our institution makes more teen and responsibility. when they flagging, and dough graded, our institutions fail to form us or tee form to us be cynical, self-indulgent or reckless, reinforcing exactly the vices that undermine a free society. >> guest: that become is really about the nature of the social crisis that we're living through. the previous book which, the fractured rub, tries to think in broad terms about the social dynamics, the history that led us to the porlarization we're living with in our society, and this newer book, time to build, thinks but the institutional underpinnings of the social crisis we're living through am crisis we know to be a social crisis. rate 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 over recent years and i argue a lot of that has to do with a weakening of our institutions and particularly with a sensen the part of a lot of people within he institutions the purpose of the institutionings not to form them, it nose to mold them, but is to serve as a platform for them to stand on and be seen and build a following or build their own brand or elevate themselves. i think there's been this kind of deformation of our core institutions from politics to the profession to the media the academy where a lot of people now think of the institutions they're part of as existing as platforms for themselves rather than as molds of our character and our 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 societal life and we see that very pourfully in politics, which has become so performative now, people run for congress to get a bigger social media following and to get a bert time slot on cable news rather than to think how to work within an institution to change our country for the better. >> host: due 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. simply put, many members of congress have come to understand themselves most fundamentally as players in a larger cultural ecosystem, at the point of which is not but as a perform testify outrage for partisan audience.

you mention matt gaetz, republican of florida and alexandria ocasio-cortez as two people who represent this. >> i use them as examples it in problem is much more widespread. we are aft mace where we think off our political institutions as platforms for cultural war performances and people run for congress to get a blue checkmark next to their name on twitter more than to enact legislation. they're trying to good but they sigh the role that poll -- politicsing play is a way to put. thes in way to channel the outrage of voters who got them there they can perform, they can stan at outsiders and comment about congress rather than an insider and act from within congress. obviously that's happens the presidency. presumed exemplifies that more than anything that win have, the send the presidency is a stage,

a place to perform and the president sees him as an outsider. spends time talking about the government. complaining on twitter but things things things the department of justice does rather than funding him 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 yourselves the question that we now don't ask anymore in our politics. goodnight my role here how should i gave goes well beyond politics. as a member of congress or president how shy behave butting a as an employee or employee or pastor parisher in, pardon or neighbor, 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 is toward great, responsibility, a greater sense of obligation to one another rather than think ourselves as standing alone on a platform and acting out kind of

cultural war rage. the logic of social media has overtaken a lot of core institutions and we need to push back again 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 to it to. i think the forces run deeper than tenth nothing. 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. think the larger social process that we have been living through has been a function of a kind of liberalization, diversification, in the american we talk but above, the middle of 20th 20th century, many of the great social forces in the country were telling people to be more like everyone else. they were forces of conformity and that felt very constricting to many people inch our time those same social forces are telling everyone to be yourself, they're force of individual liberation. there's a lot of good to that, but also can tear society apart and we have to find a balance

and push against place where we tend to lead too hard and that means recovering solidarity and our society. >> host: i want to bring your back, the great debate, into our conversation as well and i want to start by reading this quote from it. the political left and right often seem to represent genuinely distinct points of view and our national life steam seams almost by design to bring to the surface questions that divide them. how did we become a country of political left and right? >> guest: that this subject of the 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 look at the origins of the left-right divide which has been a subject of my work more broadly. and it does that by looking through the lens of the late 18th century debate between

edmund burke and thomas paine. edmund burke, agrees irish born english politician thought to we one of the fares of modern conservatism, 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 peopling world, revolutionary now and through. and they engaged. they had an argument about the nature of social change, and that argue. encapsulated a lot of what over time would become the core distinction between the left and right. it begins in some respects as i vibe the moan view, beginning from a kind of difference of anthropology. difference of how it is that the human being enters the world and what we require in order to thrive and flourish and be free and both of these views are generally speaking liberal views. that belong in a free to site, both believe in democracy, believe in individual liberty,

they believe in protecting the equal rights of all, but they differ fundamentally what the free society really is. they differ about the nature of the human person and i think that debate, a 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 parties in the sense that they are divided by a difference of opinion about what would be good for everyone. what be good no society at program and that difference is a constructive difference and i think partisan politics can be very ugly and very divisive in our country's life, is necessary, it's a way of frame offing and formulating the debates we have but the country's good, and i think it's still serves us this way ask at the differences between left and right that were evidenced at the end of the 18th century are still relevant and still property of what our politics is about. >> host: what's your background that you came to this point of

view? >> guest: well, my background and i was -- i'm an immigrant to the united states, born in israel mitchell family came to u.s. when itself was eight so i grew up here, grew up mostly in new jersey. i weapon 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 push white house, policy staffer in president george w. bush's second term. then went into the think tank world where my work is really been at the intersection of what my academic work was but which is political theory and philosophy and what my work in public policy has been about, which is political practice. i'm a scholar at the american enterprise institute and run a quarterly journal called national affairs which i started in 2009, and some ways i try connect theory and practice in politics to help each shed some

light on the other. and as to how i came to my conservative screws the fog me as for most people that's kind of a mystery. some of it has to do with influences around me growing up, i'm sure. my father was conservative. but it also ultimately reaches to some mysterious level that we never fully understand about ourselves. just how we come to have the fundamental views we have is awesome a little mysterious, but i am impressed by institutions that enable people to thrive, and that means i'm very impressed by the american social order, bit 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 in this society so i'm a conservative. >> host: what are the nongauche negotiables in our social compact. >> guest: those in the deck calculate 0 independence. human equality and human dignity. people can her to street because

we all saw on video just a gross violation and abuse of a human person who ought to be treated as an equal and wasn't. that is i think 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 government exists to protect the rights, and i think from there on we have a lot of debates. should government protect the rights, what should the institutions look like, what would be most effective. the basic ideals written in the charter of our society are the nonnegotiables of american politics and i think they're true. >> host: 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 awe their and scholar, yuval live yip. 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 skied, came out in 2013. the fractured rub, renewing america's social contract in the age of individualism, came out in 2017, and finally his new is book is a time to build from family and community, to congress and the campus, how recommitting to our institutions can revive the american dream. we want you to participate in our conversation this afternoon. there's self televize do that -- several ways to do. that we begin with phone funs, (202)748-8200, for those of live until the east and central time zones you can dial in. (202)748-8201 for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. you can also 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,@booktv is our handle. def dr. levin, back to he great debate. have what the been he lasting impact from the french reef luigs. >> guest: the french revolution a core epical moment in the western and it's been absolutely ear now norm mouse. unleashed the -- absolutely enormous. unleashed the mott term wave of revolution governors and bad and it created the frame, the shape of modern radicalism that ended up shaping 19th century politics and many ways is still with us. it is important to see that the french revolution is not where modern liberalism was born.

thisline recall society broadly -- i don't anyone liberal as in the left but liberal in our way of life -- began in uk well before the american louvre and american revolution happened well before the french revolution not of. i think french revolution of a great birth of a truly free society that is made possible the achievement 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? do we change by building on the past or change by breaking with the past? that basic question, which in a lot of ways this distinction between left and right, became the defining organizing question of the politics of not only

france but britain the united states and the democracying kind triand every free society today. before at the french revolution you look at english politics and parties are divided over the question whit is the crown or parliament that should have power. that was changing by then already but thes of the 18th 18th century buff at the french revolution the question that tied left and right was the question of the french revolution. the question of whether the purpose of our politics is an ongoing constant revolutionary process that ultimately will lib rat us buyerly from the burdened of the past, or whether the purpose of our politics is a process of gradual change to address problems that keeps us connected to the roots of western civilization and enables to us make the most of our inheritance. the former view is the progressive view. the latter is the conservative view, and the french revolution has an enormous amount to do with why that is the nature of our debates.

a humanly cops sequential event and continues to be. >> host: fits with your descriptions of edmund burke and thomas paine, burke is a reformer and pain -- >> burke was a whig, not a torry, he came from the reforming party but his fundamental disposition was gradual reform and reform is not revolution. it almost is offer inside opposition to revolution. it says we need to change gradually so that we don't lose what we have built up, what works and we can change what doesn't work. paine had much less patience for that kind of gradual change. he said the status quo is unjest. we need to overturn it and start over. we to the in the principles that to guide a free politics so let's throw out of what we got which came from an age of oprogression and start over. pape was a much more radical revolutionary, and both of those

views are contained within the american revelation, the revolution was beg acrest and a radical revolution. you can see it in the declaration of independence which begins by stating very radical principles, true principles, put then guess on to state that prudence demandow don't just overthrow governments for shallow reasons, and it goes on to list the reasons why the americans want to revolt. they say they've been denied their right as englishman, denied recourse to the institutions long been theirs. the american revolution, unlike the friend which was a purely radical break, the american revolution was beth a conservative and progressive revolution and contained within it the spire framework of the politics that would become ours. >> host: (202)748-8200 in the east and central time zones, (202)748-8201 in the mountain and pacific time zones. your first call comes from

elizabeth in new jersey. hi, elizabeth. >> caller: hello, howl are you? jo. >> host: just fine, mam. >> i want to ask mr. live yip how does the explain the disconnect and complicity in the conservatives in the senate and scanning and how they go along with an amoral and self-serve and divisive, self-absorbed dictateyear like the president? how -- it's not -- things are not adding up. just wondering what he would say about that. >> host: can you can you, ma'am. >> guest: i'm a conservative who is critical of donald trump. i don't think he's fit for the presidency. wasn't my choice, and i don't think he has done well by our country. 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 0 or should disapprove of. i don't think president trump is a conservative. and i don think he is advanced the kind of world view that conservatives should want to see advanced in our politics but we have reached a point where each party now too often define thursday other party as the country's biggest problem. rather than think can notice real challenges we have, we think of one another as the core problem to be debt with -- dealt with and that kind of intense partisanship means ultimately you prefer your open 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. his appoint good judges. think when it comes to regulatory reform and other things he's 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 in "new york times" may be supporting joe biden. >> guest: i think that's unclear. he hasn't said who is sporting exactly. think george w. bush whatever with might think of his policies and 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 time is he lived always with the weight of responsibility of the presidency on his shoulders. he enough his decisions mattered, at that time lot depend on them, that they had to be taken seriously, the owed it to the country to approach his job with the gravity it required, and that is clearly lacking in this president. no way around that. >> host: back to the great debate, quote, politics is a negotiation of these principled differences in response to

particular needs and events. party politics should not be looked down upon at unseemly, thomas burke argues, on the contrary, it is the means by which well intentioned politicians join together as honorable come -- compatriots. >> guest: edmund burke makes a positive case for parties. they're necessary to organize politics put very few home have made an explosive, almost philosophical case for thed in for parties in a free society. bourque is one, thomas jefferson is another and would have found themselves in dirt parties. beth saw what parties enable us to do is form broad coalitions. we think of parties now as fundamentally divisive as breaking us down into factions. but in fact parties broadly understand have a strong

incentive to form broad, not narrow coalitions if you're the democratic party and have to run candidates in a.m. and oregon you have a built a broad tent. i you're the republican party you've ha to find ways to appeal to people in broad terms in different circumstances and different situations and that is the healthy force in our politics. it forces compromise and it forces cooperation. ultimately the institutions we require in a free society are ones that forced us, that compel to us accommodate each. other why the congress this essential core institution of our constitutional system bus the congress exists to compel accommodation. always going to be fundamental differences in our politics. people disray grow. that's never going away. the question is how do we happen that, live witness senate and the handle in a free society and a liberal 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 do think burke i right that parties belong on the list of

those institutions. >> host: lynn from maryland. go ahead. >> well, i am not -- i'm sorts of off misquestion 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 and so on were right about the policy, absolutely right, they did not have the right to say to the president, you must follow me because i'm right. and as to character, long ago -- [inaudible] -- the march on washington. the guy who organized the march on washington, the main guy, not the philosophical guy, ding king

king, they said about him, -- said about him, better watch it, he's a civil guy. keeps organizing. we have to have him. better watch him. see that dedoesn't grab a little bullet. better watch him. i am not into character. i'm not into trump coming into my house and soing for and so on. one more -- gore vidal had burr say about luther martin, the best lawyer in the united states, drunk or sober. trump is not violating the constitution, not violate anything headquarters not violating in. if he curses he -- that's fine with me. >> host: all right, we'll live it there. a little bit but political character. >> guest: it's important to say president trump is to the a

dictator. he is the elected president of the united states if have a lot of problems life he has governed and done have the the character it takes to be our president but hi he is our president. he was elected. has not violated the constitution, at least not in any obvious way i can see. there are debates about some of the things hey done and those debatewood bill had in the courts. so for all the objections i do have to him i think the arming. ed you sometimes here that heave is an authoritarian or dictator are not well-funds. if anything trump is an unusually weak president who has not used the powers of the president he might have in a crisis like the public health crisis we have been living through this year and other circumstances. so i raise before some objection is have and i have many more but i dent think he's a dictator and that word should not be thrown around. >> host: patricks from minnesota. suburb of minneapolis. hi, patrick. >> good morning, guys.

excellent conversation. it was all transparency i've never read any of his books but i find the subject matter extremely relevant now, then, and forever. but my question was, in reference to inequality which seems to be the word that protesters are using and-the parent or one side in the past five, ten years, or since trump has been elected, has the great society done us an injustice in not making us great win me inaugurated this in the late 60s and dressed this subject matter opposite before? and have we watered down the expectations of purr public schools that has short changed the e these generations in order to compete. >> host: patrick, before we get an answer from yuval levin,

what's the last couple of weeks in your town been for you? you're what, 20-mile from joint minneapolis? it's a privilege evidence community on the western periphery of 394 on the outskirts of minneapolis. i am a originally from wisconsin. i moved here 35 years ago. i went to community college and barely got through high school. minnesota gave me a chance. i started school later in life, graduated ten years later and have contributed the community and have green with it. this has been a real disappointing time to see this all 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. i really compare but 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 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 a product of these policies that have not worked? i'm not saying i a heavy hand is better but other options we have not explored? and the character issue that mr. levin has brought up, in reference to the possible

selfishness of group think and individual thought processes of -- it's about me now and my market, instead of collectively our community and our state. >> host: thank you, i let's bring yuval levin into this. thank you for spending a few minutes with us on booktv. >> guest: thank you for that, and for all that you. do it's people like you who make this country great, and ultimately it's that 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 knelt in our society. some of this have been effective,some less so. we're paying on eform mose price for. the financially, fiscally in ways that will force is to

rethink how they're structured, leak medicare and medicaid. we have been left with a tremendous bill to pay that has to be thought through and that is a burden on the future even as they have dawn great deal of good. the great society was a social vision and is connect fed our minds and in reality to the civil rights revolution. the civil rights bills preceded the great society. the key ones of the 1960s, 64 and 65, came really before the heart of the great society, and i think those bills have been largely successful, and even as we life through a moment where we see how much remains to do, on the civil rights front and really 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 over the years, that 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 contend with in mid-centurymer, let alone in prior deck spade 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 the street in 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 that cop and when our society simply 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 that needs to be made is moral progress which is not the same thing is a social progress. moral progress has to be made aanew. i think the problem wed have are roosevelted in the human heart. and we he need to be formed and

educated and shaped to be moral people. we require engage. with the moral ideals that can give us the right form to be free people to respect each other to acknowledge each e's core anything it in -- core dignity and that has to be done in every generation. we have to change social structures to make it easier ask treat people eannually under the law and 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 we were civilization and of american society. that job will never end and 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. >> host: what is your take on sneep very progressive city that prides 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 way in which the power of the police unions and other structural institutional factors make it very difficult for the police department in a place like minneapolis to enforce its own rules and make sure the 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 ways. not every way. so 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 the used to but we should not just accept that they'll always happen.

we should deal with them. we should make sure we're engaged with one another as citizens, make sure our institutions are formed around the core commitment to the equality of every person, regardless of race, regardless of anything. and that is work that is going ha if have to be done in liberal jurisdictions and conservative ones. >> the book a time to build from family and community to congress and the campus, how recommitting to institutions can revive the american dream. stewarts in seattle. you're on with author, yuval levin. >> caller: hello good, mentioner to both of you. would like to know how i as a nontrump supporter but definite more on the side of burke than i am on the side of pape, when i was younger he was on the side of pape. i appreciate the sentiment but as an older person i appreciate burke more. how ick talk to people who are ardent trump supporter who seem to be resistant to compromise,

absolutely opposed to common cause unless you're totally on that team, the partisanship seems to have gotten way out of hand. >> guest: i very much agree with you about this. think that in both parties the unwillingness to compromise is now the core problem of our political life. not the far there's a left and right 0 factions wind left or right. it's the fact they're not willing to see each other as conversation partners and as partner thursday compromise the life for free society is compromise and i think what porlarization is really meant in the politics. 21 until century i loss of the sense that compromise is the only way that politics will function. it's happened for a vote of reasons. one reason is the fact we haven't really had a sturdy majority or minority party in our poll ticket in some time.

look at american political history, political sciences use the terms the sun party and moon party. motor thiess in politics that strong party, might the democrats rubble offered the whig before them or others, but -- and' that strong party reigns for a time and there's a minority party of course but it functions as a minority party and force compromise and use it leverage at the margins where it can and then things change and there's a political reeye linement and the mind inert becomes the majority. we have lived since the middle of the 1990s in a period where hour shifted back and fort and do not have a party that is the majority party of the country or minority party. one thing that means is each party always thinks it can win everything at the next elect it and can. every new president we have had who has come into office since 1992 has come in with control of both houses of congress. with his own party controlling

both houses congress. that means parties shift back and forth and each party is right to imagine if it just waits the out, after the next election it can control things and push things in it direction. win that happens to the majorities arer in very big ander in very strong and you don't get very much done unless you are willing to compromise. so the major legs that we have seen in this century has tended to be quite partisan and therefore has tend 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 each party might have to deal with the other. at the end of the day civility means acknowledging that at the people you disagree with will still be there tomorrow and the political dynamics are such that you might imagine they won't be oomph another lex and we win it all and that's it, whoever we might be. i think helping people see that ultimately political progress

only happens in of what direction you care but, by compromise with people you disagree with is the way to advance these conversations and as practical matter sometimes that means working at the local level or the state level, where we still do have real compromise happening i. i live in the state of maryland and we have a quite conservative republican carter with a pretty progressive democratic legislature, and they work together because they have to. at a practical level there's in other way. i think that kind of recognition is just more on the surface at the state level and at the local level and means be should be channeling more power to state level and local level where problems can be resolved in a constructive way until our unable politics recaptures something itself proper tomorrow you can seemed us a message. >> host: you send us a message series use text or social media, the text number, 202 -- text carefully -- 748-8903, include

your first name and city if you would. and larry in florida texts in: what can an individual do to make politics better? >> guest: thank you for the question. it's the question, of course and the question i try to take up in the latest book, time to build. i has to begin where we are, has to begin in institutions we each are part of. those might be community institutions or civic or religious or educational one, political institutions in our community or might be national politics. we have to ask yourselves how we can work together withs to advance the common goal and to ask of uses, given misrule here, given the institutional responsibility i have, how can i do better? that kind of small question is the path towards larger reform. the book lays out larger reforms that are necessary reforms of congress, of the party system, some necessary reforms in he

academy and in the professional world. the book talk about the media, civic life but before any of those reforms can happen, people wind our institutions have to recognize they are, we are part of the problem and we have to see that all of us are subject to this tendency to think off our our institutional responsibilities as optional and to think of our institution as platforms for ourselves and take ourselves beyond that mismisimprogression, it's an essential prerequisite for change. >> host: one of the other big institutions that you tackle in a time to build is the education system, both higher and lower, and posts on facebook page: our 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 who are out on the street now. >> guest: well, i think this is a very important point. one hand it's crucial to see our education system in america, especially the k through 12, primary and secondary schoolings, is enormously decentralizeed. it is a system where control over curriculum is generally held at the local level and where different places can do very different things and that's okay. that's the way to live with diversity and make the most of it. places where ideas will detalk but dope like much. places where ideas will be talked about that i like but maybe other people don't and that's going to happen in america. 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 is as old as the history of our society and as essential to towarding it -- to understanding it but has to teach fully the history of the struggle against racial oppression which is as old also our society and offers as lot to work with in trying to do better as a country. it is 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 fled rick douglas or abraham lincoln or harriet tubman or martin luther king is a tremendous failure of responsibility. think we have to teach the good with the bad. we have to try toughary 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

principles of equality that have always been the ideals of our society even though have not always lived up to them to people who have devoted their lives to that struggle the ways we can learn from and be inspired. the effort lies think 69 team project would deny that and say there's only the down side and dark side, fail the drowning 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 conserve fors for puritan orthodoxy ask train men of religion to move the larger community to repent of its sins and seek career recommendation. this -- redemption. this more aim remains a driving purpose of higher education, know largely sharp of its religious root, often looks like classroom ininstruction in campus political activism, the demand over the larger society a

mass repentance for some grave collective sins. >> guest: that chapter tries to make sense of what has been going on american college campuses in the last few years, and it does that by trying to offer a little perspective about the mixed character of higher education, and that mixed character is a always been part of higher education. we demand 0 lot of things of universities, give people the skills they need for the american economy, we expect them to give students access to the deepest truths and highest and most beautiful things in our civilization. and we also expect them to be engaged in trying to improve our society to be active the n trying to change things ump all part of american higher education. idea that campusing a timism began in the 1960s is absolutely untrue. campus activisms 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 the campuses is different but the character, the since that 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 a higher truth and a kind of liberal education, and the aim of changing society. i think the american elite campuses have fallen out of have the balance and now they lean much too heavily in the direction of a kind of campus activism thatsen pout learning and teaching. so it's not fundamentally academic and you have seen some display 0 ill liberalism that are enormously trouble can, a closing off of knowledge and teaching toward truth rather than a building up of that knowledge the answer is not to

pretend that we can have higher education that is completely devoid of political activism. nothing to do with the larger soave site. absolutely not what we should want or expect. but i think the university has to answer fundamentally to the academic ideal which means everything it does should be done in the form of teaching and learning, and that is where some elite school have beentive connected from their -- disconnected from the purposes and the culture of liberal education that sees teaching and learning as fundamental to human flushing has eenormous role to play in bring the culture of the campuses back into balance and providing a rising generation of students the kind of enormous advantage that higher education can give us. >> host: another contemporary headline, ivanka trump rips cancel culture after she is dropped as commencement speaker at wichita state university after the students protested. >> guest: cancel culture is what

i'm talking about here then idea that students shouldn't hear from people who they are their professors don't agree with. that the campus is no place for opinions other than the kind of accepted mainstream consensus progressive views of society and that view is advanced as though it were a form of rebellion against the establishment but in fact it is the establishment. cultural progressivism now owns all of our institutions and its important that college students hear dissenting views, hear a view variety of viewed. no ju intellectual diversity for the purpose of diverse, shouldn't just hear everybody and anybody and there's a difference between 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 beenad to keep out conservative voices ex-herber tarean voices --

libertarian voices, academic voices who come from a different place politically children the main stream of professors and students is an enormous problem on the american campus and is a betrayal of the academic ethic. >> host: claude in tidl ventilator, oregon, you'll have been very patient, where is tagy valley. >> caller: tydh, tie valley, oregon. >> host: is senate. >> caller: oregon. >> host: where in oregon? >> caller: central oregon. >> host: all right. go ahead with your question or comment for yuval levin. >> i don't have a question. i have a statement. i worry about ourself as up tri. worry about ourself as how we rue ourselves as american citizens. get -- all the time for being in the military. don't need to be thanked to be in the military. i consider -- i volunteered during the draft. i consider what i did was for my

country, okay? and i view today a political system that looks like a tug of war, two groups which are basically the same side of the coin, just two faces of -- doesn't matter which one lands on top. all want to be on top. think we would be better to divest ourselves of all political parties in the united states, and just require people to do their job and that would be entailing changing the paradigm. i don't think that i elect somebody for their views. they dent represent me, not one politician i know in the united states, in the station, represents me. nobody in the state of oregon represents me. they represent themselves. >> host: all right. >> guest: well, i think there's a level of frustration there that is understandable but ultimately i disagree. there really is no way around the need for representative

politics in a democracy. there are going to be differences in society, about how to proceed, how to gone ourselves, what kind of laws we should have, but how we should respond to changing circumstances, and we have to ask yourselves how do we resolve these differences, make decisions? what we have in our country is a system for legitimizing that kind of decisionmaking. we're coming as close as we can to allowing people of different views to be heard, and for allowing the views of the majority to ultimately be advanced in weighed that don't trample on the right of the minority. doesn't work perfectly to put it mildly each norm mouse problems but that's the purpose of the system and what the system achieve. it's unsatisfying. that's true. and i think one of the things that to me is central and essential to why i'm a conservative issue don't expect the world to be satisfying. i think there are going to be contradictions and paradoxes and problems that don't go away,

that we can't fully resolve. we can met gate them, try to address them, make the most. them but this world is not a perfect world and how to live with its imperfections, how to address problems it confronts us in ways that are legitimate and respect each other is the challenge over core of design of our system of government and i think parties are an important part of solve thing problem, of finding ways to represent different views, and to protect minority voices. i think our institutions of government at the state and federal and local level are a part of that. the fact we're we're still dissatisfied end of, that's life but we are much less dissatisfied than we would be under a system that didn't tracheour views as seriously as this one does and didn't make an effort to represent us. surely ways we can do better and i'm open to those but there are lot of ways we could do worse and i think we should he grateful for our symptom of

government for achieving what it's allowed to us achieve as country. >> host: aubrey in richmond, virginia. hi. >> caller: how are you doing? i'm a notorious long-term c-span consumer, and i spend a lot of time watching hearings. a little while ago mr. -- said something but the scale and character of the discrimination has changed in this country. that's not true. the scale has changed, i'll agree on that one. the character has not. he made some reference to george floyd's murder and he reaction it to. mr. levin about we won't understand this he reaction george floyd's murder is not just that it was video, because we have been watching videos of police abuse from rodney kinging

forward. what we saw this time was white supremacy it's worse. you had a white police officer murder a unarmed, disarmed, disabled black man, casually while look interesting the camera. i just want you to think but that and i would you see what you see on the streets today. now, that's just theof the iceberg. we have systemic institutional discrimination that guess on every day and the worst part of it, the murders aside, i'm talking pout in the workplace, that people don't see every day, and one of the problems in that regard is the oeeoc. i want to talk but the false equivalency you create with the current republican party and democrats. we are looking at the

evolution -- i want you to understand the seeds of what we look act now were laid by people liar newt gingrich and pat buchanan but came to a head during the obama administration when the -- the meeting? you -- >> host: go head and finish your thought, tell us what it and then we'll hang up and let yuval levin respond. >> caller: okay, all right. the frank lutz meeting around the time of president obama's inauguration, first inaguration inaguration where a plan was put together for democrats -- i mean for republicans not to cooperate at all and in that regard that led to to tea party and now a we have the donald trump republicans who the ultimate manifestation of the tea party. >> host: well leave it there. thank you for your thoughts. yuval levin,ure response.

>> guest: i appreciate those concerned obviously i agree entirely with the first part of what he sid what we saw pass white supremacy and utterly unacceptable and both in character and in scope and i think that's why people are out on the streets and it's why it's perfectly clear we have a lot of work to do as a country on this front and it's essential that our politics turn its attention to that. i think as far as characterizing our porlarization as a fungs of just one party -- function of just one party, that strikes me as a symptom of porlarization more than a diagnosis. i think it's simply unquestionable that beth parties have moved toward their edges over the last two decades decadd three decade. it's been driven by various kinded on changes in campaign finance reform, cultural changed around politics, by social media. people live more in echo chambers. there's simply less cooperation

across party lines no doubt that republicans in obama era were part oft that and no doubt that democratted in bush ear and trump era have been part of that. we can point to dispeople who played devil roles in process but i think we can agree that the process has been a huge problem for our politics and our country, and that a recovery of politics that is oriented to cooperation, that i oriented to compromise, not under some dream that we're all going agree, but by accepting the reality that we're not going to agree and therefore we have to make bargains and deals and that's what our politics is about. giving each party some of what it wants in return for giving the other party of what it wants is absolutely essential. that's the way our politics works. but, look there some issues that are not negotiable ways talked but before and the issue of basic human equality, respect of person regardless of race it not negotiable. it's not a partisan issue and it's not an issue we can little partly allow to be put to the

side so that our politics can take up other things. fundamental question of human right and equal dignity and essential so who we must be as a people in america and needs to be front and center. >> host: what but the comment there is systemic institutionalized racism? >> guest: there is. i think we have to find -- we have to see that racism is both a function of the attitudes of individuals and of the arrange.s and organizations that we establish to structure our politics. do think that we have made real progress in fighting some of that institutional racism. there is less of it than there was, but that doesn't mean that we can stop the effort. doesn't mean that the working be put down, and -- the working be put down and these things were happening when there weren't phones around to take videos

them. this is not something that just started. on the contrary, this is a deep and enormous probably and has to be taken up as a fundamental challenge in american life, and i think there's no question that is one of the ways in which our country has a lot of work before it until it can claim to have reached the ideals we aspire. to it's important to see we do aspire to those ideals and do want to reach that. there's a very, very widely shared aspiration in our society and that's a good thing, but the aspiration alone is not enough. >> host: gregory in kansas city, e-mails in: afraid our system requires -- agreed our system requires compromise. how did we geoff it to the point where compromise is unseasonnability in the attitude seems to be more common on the right. >> guest: well, as i said before we have get ton that point in part how to a kind of cultural and political evolution in which our politics especially at the national level has come to be

fought around a set of almost symbolic issues where each party treat thursday other paster as the country's biggest problem and if the problem to solved is the other party then you can't compromise. the only solution to our problem is to get rid of the other party put you won't get rid of the other party and the country has actual practical problem that stand in way, whether it's of equal and racial reconciliation, to standing way of prosperity and the opportunity available to the rising generation, whether it's standing in way of the way of life we want to have together. those problems have to be taken up through public policy and only achieved by a process of accommodation and compromise in our political instance constitution. i think our political culture has been transformed in a way that understates and undermines the potential of compromise and accommodation it's happened largely at the national level

and, look, i think say this has been by one party is a symptom of the problem. not a diagnosis. it's not truth. it's been caused by both pear. there's an enormous. a contempt for at the right on the left and that contempt is deep lie destructive and makes i difficult for people to sake seriously the rat that we'll make progress by working together and there was an enormous amount of contempt for the left on the right and that leads to same problems. we're not going to away. the people you disagree with will still be here tomorrow and politic us away to live together with them as neighbors, and fellow citizens. not as enemies. they are not your enemy. >> host: you're watching booktv on c-span2. it's television for serious readers. this is our monthly "in depth" program, this month is author and scholar yuval levin, we're concentrating on his three most recent books, the great debate,

came out in 2013. the fractured republic renewing america's social contract in the age of individualism, 2017. and a time to build, his most recent, from family and community to congress and the campus, how recommitting to institutions can revive the american dream. charlie in roslyn heights, new york, you're on the air. >> caller: hi, everybody. i like to make two points. i agree with he was saying when it came to morals and just the human heart. we don't value character in our society anymore. i don't know if with ever bid just -- i u-usually tell young people the more than important thing in life is being a good, decent person. that's the first thing we should be and that's not valued in our society. everything he is talking about,

we have problem in our society that he is not mentioning. he's not mentioning the fact we have a concentration of wealth and communication with that wealth. you have a corporate media. and i think that's controlling the debate. we need to talk to one another. we need good civil debate and i don't hear it. i would love to hear a debate between two americans, have opposing views. there are only two views. there are many views, and we need to get them out and debate and talk to one another and that's not happening and i think the concentration of wealth and with the concentration of the media with the wealth has something to do with that. >> host: charlie, thank you very much. yuval levin, my guess is that most of us think that would be a good idea to hear two points of view and have a reasonable argument, et cetera, et cetera.

>> guest: yeah. i think that's right. all kinds of ropes have to do with the incentives that confront our media culture why that doesn't happen much and why win we do have things we doll debate they'd tend to be a little bit more like people reading talking points and then engage inside screaming match or 12 people lined up on a cable news panel each saying a few words. i think some of that has to do with an assessment of the public's attention span is which unfair to the public, as c-span knows there are people willing to listen, to actually follow what is happening in our public life, think seriously, engage in a deep way. but i also a think the are deeper economic and cultural incentives that have taped things in a way this caller suggests the question of concentration, especially media concentration is complicated. the mid-century america that politics looks back to so much

there was a much more concentrated media architecture. you had the television networks, two or the national newspapers that had enormous cultural power to shape a mainstream kind of consensus around themselves. thingses were much more concentrated than they are now. we have had a transportation from men attention of the -- fragment addition and it's difficult know who to thrust and whether they're follow anything standards but certainly a greater diversity of voices but see tame time there's a greater that lesser economic concentration. where economic power in the media world is very heavily centered around a few large corporate owners of media companies, and we have got enormous economic concentration in general in our economy now that's green over the last 20

years. i think these things have to be understood in tandem and breaking up concentration has to be part of the life of a free society where there irdangerous concentrations, real monopolies have to be broken up. the situation of the media is much more complex and would dealing simultaneously with a fragmentation of voices and consolidation of own areship. >> host: yuval levin, text, from maxwell rubn of pacific palisades, california. i thoroughly enjoyed reading your book, the great debate and the political philosophy class last fall. ohm in the door on institutional roles, hereditary politics and when to make reform. me question is how we can eliminate unhealthy populism to from our republic on both the arrest and lying and get the

general public to trust career politician iowa believe have the experience and wisdom tom burke outlined. >> guest: thank you very much for that. i it's always nice to hear that book being assigned in college classes and it's especially gratifying to hear from someone who benefited from that or got something out of it. i think the question of populism which as has always been a core question in political life and very much alive in our contemporary politics now is one way to think but the condition of our institution. i think that we don't really face the choice between elitism and populism, between the view that the people have all the answers and should just be empowered directly and the view that only some elite has all the answers and should have the power. the answer that is embody in the american constitutional system, the view that is embodied in our constitution, is that no one has all the answers and politics has to arrange itself around the

reality that no one has all the ans which means no one should have all the power. the system gives the people some power, quite a lot, to elect public officials, exercise power over them through the mechanism of electoral leverage, but also gives certain kinds of elite institutions significant power. judges are at some distance from the public. the president is not as directly answerable to the public as members of congress, for example. we have competing power centers, competing levels and layers of power. american federalism, separation of powers. logic begins from the premise that no one knows everything and our system has to put different powers in tension with each other so that for change to happen, has to be broad agreement that endires over a long -- endures over a long period so it's sustained long enough to create a majority in congress, a president who will

support it, a general public sentiment that will enable it to endure and be accepted, and that means change happens slowly, and that slowness can be very frustrating. that means there's a role for pop almost in politics and important that the system is anable to the public and take seriously public concerns and we have to accept experience in firefighter government are there's such a thing as expertise in public policy, so for example i am not a supporter of some populist idea like term limits in congress. i don't think that the people who create problems in congress are really those with the most experience. and it seems to me somebody has to have the power in that kind of system and it might as well be people who are answerable to the public and who have to good up for election rather than a permanent bureaucracy or structure which is less

answerable the festival is pretty good finding balance. >> host: phil in portland, oregon. hi, phil. >> caller: hi. thank you, c-span, for taking my call. before i get to my question like to quote kareem abdul-jabbar hat racism is like dust. it's everywhere in world and until you sign -- shine light on it you don't see it. so america should take the issue to regain its leadership some deal with it and the rest of the world will follow mitchell my question, how we make the supreme court an independent body again? my suggestion is to take away the april appointmentship from the president and also for the body to renounce their political dedication in writing, they will renounce their political affiliation in their decisionmaking. there it is.

>> guest: well, i think that the -- when it comes to courts he face the same challenge witch need some billion between accountability and independence. so to argue for fully independent supreme court makes sense. i we think that court will always make better decisions than our political system which is answerable to the public. also a huge practical challenge how it can be fully independent. who are these people who will have this much power without accountable and who will decide who is on the court? i think our system reaches a compromise that makes sense which is that judges have lifetime tenure so they're not answerable to elects or to elected officials once they are appointed. but they are appointed by elected officials who are answerable to at the public so that there is a connection between them and our democratic system and also some independence. i have been open to the idea that lifetime tenure on the supreme court is something that could be rethought and proposals out the for 18 year terms, for

example,, so you don't have justices who are appointed when they're 50 and then serve for 40 years on the court and you certain of stuck with whatever you get but you have a little bit more of a chance to change the makeup of the court, and supreme court justices once they served 18 years would go to the appellate court are. still have have lifetime tenure as jumps but on the supreme court only 18 yours. every president would get two or three appointments and little more balance between our democratic politics politics and independent judiciary. think that's a workable idea and ought to be considered. the framers didn't imagine that anybody would be sitting on the court for 40 years, when they created lifetime tenure. but the balance between independence and accountable is never going to be perfect or easy to strike. >> host: next call from jim in

churchton, maryland good. ahead, jim. >> caller: good afternoon. i have a question for mr. levin. just like to preface it with a comment to lead up to the question. i don't see myself as republican, democrat or independent. i voted both ways for the last 45 years but in what he just mentioned, about the contempt that the democrats have for the republicans, i believe from what i have seen in keeping up with current events that contempt began in 2000, because the democrats feel that they were robbed of the white house by the supreme court. and that continues all the way into the 2010s with the merritt garland seat or appointment of obama and the senate republicans holding that up a and feel they were recover of that seat and then continues on into 2016, where they're going to believe

they were robbed of a second seat because of hillary clinton had -- was approximately three million popular votes more than that president trump but in all those instances, the constitution is what ruled out, not their emotions that they believe they were robbed. misquestion is, for you, mr. levin, is your characterization of the president trump's character and how do you put that up against in 2016 we the exoneration of human being income the -- hillary clinton in the e-mail question and continued with the illegal fisa warrants, one roger and three enewell renews and then morphs across fire razor also in general flynn --

>> host: tell you what, jim. a lot there 'building a pattern there, what i is your take. >> guest: like a good prosecutor. i think that the story of contempt begins earlier. and that you can see the less contempt of the right in the robert bork hearings in the 1980s and see to right contempt of the left. the porlarization of politics didn't just begin in 201 but wordens in this century for some reasoned mentioned and other reasons. on the question of -- i don't defend hillary clinton's character either. i don't the we had a good option in the 2016 election. two candidates who were beth number fbi investigation at the time of the election, completely unprecedented. but the question of character, the president's characters is not little maltly a legalistic question about all of these particular kind of named

scandals. it is a question of how a person think about the kinds of responsibility he he has in the presidency and how he treats people and i think there's a kind of narcissism at the core of president trump's way of thinking about the world that is fundamentally a character problem and leads a bullying attitude, some of the attitudes he has about immigrants and others, is just not something we should see in our president. so i don't think it's ultimately about the particular scandals and houston they get worked out. it's about the man's character and character matters. matters in a president and there's just no way around it and ultimately exacts real costs. we salt that crises we are dealing with now. can never get away from character. >> host: when we ever we have an "in depth" guest on we ask him or her to list fav riff -- favorite books here's your

choices, george will, statecraft as soul craft, and two more, crisis of the house divided and george elliott, middle major. tell us. >> guest: this is a list you might expect from a conservative, maybe less two are less familiar. the book, house divided is an indebt study of the lincoln-douglass debate. he was a oil philosopher and teach and he wrote he become in 1959 which is a close reading of the lincoln-douglass debates that buts them in an extraordinary way, amazingly successfully in the philosophical context of classical political thought and

articulate lincoln's thinking about morality to show the depth of the issues at stake in the lincoln-douglass debates and through that to show the depth of the issues at stake in american politic at it moment 0 greatest crisis. an extraordinary become i really recommend to everybody. still in present and well worth your while. middle march is -- i see looking at the list now it's the only work of fiction on that list, which just speaks to my weakness as a reader. it is a great english novel, written by general elliott, george elliott's pen name of marion evans, one of the great english writers of the 19 until century. middle march is her best novel. but i haven't read all or novels of published in 1871 but it is set in the 1830s in english met leans and it's a kind of epic novel but gets at some

hugely important issues of family and community, of the status of women, of how social change happens, and also just a great gripping story. ... he is currently reading the upswing andev alan jacobs the year of our lord. >> the upswing is the next book it is sort of note asue bowling alone. it describes the breakdown of american civic institutions. in the rise of loneliness and individualism in the extreme form in american life.

and is one of the great social observers of american life the book upswing which was supposed to bee delayed a little bit to the fall. is the new study. it actually looks at a subject we took up a little earlier pattern of communitarianism and individualism over the course of the past century he said it shows a coming together in a pulling apart. when you look at all sorts of social indicators not only civic injury -- engagement. also economic activity. you find in america it was individualistic. that mobilized in the direction of solidarity in the middle of the 20th century and then began to pull apart. and now were at another extreme. c

i think it will be a very important book and it will be out in a few months i guess. alan jacobs has written some wonderful books about the intersection of intellectual life and theology in politics and society. this book figure of our lord's. it was published two years ago. it is about a group of thinkers in the final years of the second world war who tried to envision and imagine what the postwar order would look like.ri w it was a group intellectual biology.he something i would recommend to everybody. i do get met with some criticism at the time which i think in some ways was right

part of what it described as the demise of american civil life was the evolution of american civil life. so that the old clubs can civic organizations definitely did get weaker. they found other ways to join together. the fundamental argument that he made. they were heading and the isolation. it was right.. in the problem became worse over time with the political polarization political polarization in the growth of technology that social media and other technologies can bring us together but actually do that by keeping us apart. and many of the trends that they pointed to have been shown not to only be right but have gotten worse over time. 748-8200. if you want to participate in

our conversation. for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. we will also scroll through our text number and our social media site.ch good afternoon. thank you for having me on in and join the conversation here. have a few observations and then a basic question we are a nation of debaters there is no doubt about that and compromise in a compromise is essential in order to arrive at our solutions. i would also like to interject that a gentleman who wrote a book unpopular is him t said that politics and politicians well not save us. i thoroughly agree with him on that.

my question is although compromise is essential to getting to solutions how can and why would one compromise their core beliefs in something they believe case in point the abortion issue. >> no matter what side you are on. >> it points to the question of what we mean by compromise. i don't think it has to mean i giving up on core beliefs i think thatpl it's part of what you want in a park practical policy question by prioritizing what you want based precisely on your core beliefs you are forced to decide what you are willing to give and what most matters to you.

there are certainly issues like abortion and others where it's very difficult to compromise we do compromise on those questions when it comes to practical matters when we face a choice that is an all or nothing choice we definitely strive to turn into something like a give and take. abortion in part because it has been it has been less open to this kind of compromise. a lot of people on the pro-life side. it would certainly be a diversity of outcomes if you did that. some states would have very liberal abortion regimes. we would certainly had more than we have now in the united states. they have the most liberal abortion regime. no constraints whatsoever. it is much more extreme than any european society and most

other countries have. they have very strong views on the moral question and they would be open to a more moderate law that allowed for their views to be respected to a greater degree. it's about give-and-take. it is about applying those practical questions in ways that allow you to tell the differenceio between gaining ground and losing ground in allow you to gain ground by making it clear what your priorities are. and that's where give-and-take becomes possible. >> it is good see c-span back to normal. >> my question is we thought this last several weeks. two examples of police brutality one against mister

floyd and at the other one against the gentleman in buffalo. who didn't seem to be bit video and everything. we had 50 police officers walk past him. one kind of looked down at him and was told to get away.s even though he was bleeding. how do we look at that. we assume that floyd is a racial the other gentleman was white. i think the huge racial problem. but the problem here with bladder -- and badly trained police. all through the country. and many places even liberal

places they had been getting much more demonstrators in protesting than the conservative places have. thank you anyone for taking my question. i think some of what we are seeing the tendency of power to corrupt their head to always be ways of keeping power in check and making people with authority accountable some of it certainly is racial. and some of it is abuse of power. it's important to see that these are of course exceptions in the practicing of policing america. they do enormously important work to keep us safe every day. they have to be respected also even as a police training practices and social institutions are reformed and transformed to address the problems that we have it's a

very complicated problem but i think there is no question that the abuse of power is a constant threat and whether it is done in the name of racism as a form of abuse. it should be totally unacceptable and some other things that we are learning in a way this week. we had known for years that this kind of abuse exists. they can't be shoved to the side. we can just wait for it to pass. i think that's has to be ahe way that we think about policing. and always in the way that respects the need for order and 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 really calls on us to take the problems our society faces seriously and never forget that giving people power needs they also had to be watched in the use of the power. in a time to build you right that this is the irony we have confronted. the failures of our institutions have led us to demand that they be uprooted or demolished but we cannot address those failures without renewing those very institutions. there is a tendency in moments like this. really the past few decades in the pallet text. to say we need to just burn down our institutions and get them off of us and be liberated from them. the struggle against the establishment and the elite. all of these things are understandable. they are driven by real frustrations with roots in very real problems. we need functional

institutions. we need the police we just do. there's no way around it. p and that means we need power to be exercised in responsible ways. 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. how do we renew and revitalize not just how do we get rid of them. dan please go ahead with your question or comments. it's great to talk to you this afternoon. i want to give you a little background about myself. i had been a student of the demographics for years. i also wrote recently. about morality in america. we all think about our missing

trips. i would like to apply those letters to morality in america. the statement to you. i can of have this mantra that has been part of my dna for years it goes something like this. as a secular world goes up with the lack of vocations. i want your comments on that. i want to say to you that education education up morality in the proper sense i think we would solve many of these problems that they had been calling about. thank you. ultimately.

every effective form of education is a kind of morality. whether that is learning our history in a way that can inspire us to be better people a rather than just lose faith and hope in our country. whether that is education that is directed specifically to forming characteronll i think te formations that they perform for us is moral information. if they are deformed it leads to moral d formation. that's why the health and the standing in the character of our institutions matters enormously i think that evolution is a complicated story in some ways we certainly have seen a decline in religious practice. in other ways we have seen an increase in the demand and hunger in the moral life.

i 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 face now. or whether they are challenges of racism and injustice. i think there's an enormous opportunity now for the institutions to rise up and offer themselves up as responsible formative institutions. i don't think we see it now. it is a moment that demands it. what i imagine how we might make our way forward from here.or and make the coming years better than last few years that kind of emergence of more institutions offering themselves up as ways for each of us to become betterct for the local and personal level is absolutely essential to that picture. you used the word devotion.

i think devotion see my i think devotion is what is required for us to be committed to the institutions that we belong to in society i think all of us look for things to be devoted to. ways that we might be made better by making ourselves more like the things that we admire rather than just promote ourselves or put ourselves out there on our own performing what we really want is to be part of something. something that helps improve our country and our world. the sources of devotion are one of the things most in need now. we buy the language in our society but there is an enormous hunger for proper objects of devotion in the

revitalization of our country will proceed that way if it happens. can you please comment on the political correctness. it is a term that is used to describe the ways in which some of our institutions demand the political tenants. as the price of admission to american life. you can be a professor if your views are not the views of the majority where you can't participate in some professional institutions. you can't be a journalist. i think it is a problem.. there are also ways that we on the right can exaggerate it sometime. or were being held back because other people have

conspired to keep us back. we also had to be better at offering ourselves w as an alternative as a way forward for america in offering up a more attractive in a appealing form of what the right has to say. too often what we say is too exclusive. it doesn't seem to be speaking to everybody in america. to ask how i can do better and how we can do better before amanda need that anybody might be the fault of that. >> have you ever been canceled on a college campus. i've spent a lot of time on college campusess back when that was still allowed and you can travel and go somewhere. and see people in person.ll

i have certainly seen instances of disorder around some political events. on a night when there were riots in the fire on campus. i have seen that happen. i know people who have suffered quite serious and forms of that culture. thankfully, i have not myself. at the heart of this pressureno is what has come to be called identity politics on college campuses it appears to amount to an emphasis on group identity. >> what i am describing there is an effort to try topr a understand contemporary american in its own terms.

i think there is a way of understanding the core distinction between the left and the right and getting to those routes that roots that we started with today by saying that the right to tends to think about the political challenges as order versus disorder. they tend to think of them in a press in oppressor. in the sense that social order is difficult that they are they are highly imperfect. they tend to think thater social order is the hardest to sustain.

the left tends to think that oppression is the core social problem and so everything has to be understood in terms of power relationships. i think there is obviously some truth to both of these. it does seem to me that in order to have justice you do first had to have order. we have the kind of society that has been capable of worrying about justice.rd ner i think the division and disagreement between the left in the right runs very deep. both the sides offeree serious arguments. i think it serves as well. roger and sarasota florida go ahead please. your recent mention of term limits provoked a question in my mind i see term limits as a possible way of breaking the cycle of the role of money in our political lives with

federal legislatures voting. with the vast majority of their time. and been paid huge amounts. >> you are cutting in and out there. i think we got the gist of the term limit. what would be as solution two. if you had term limits in congress is a very powerful permanent staff bureaucracy those that don't leave that build up the knowledge and experience over time they would kinda be the place of the permanent bureaucracy. i think that's worth -- worse than the situation in the

sense that some problems that we have arrived out of corruption that can follow from people been in these jobs for too long. the trouble is simply i think it would create a worse problem and worse than the same problem that we have now. if you would you would still had people who are corruptible over time because they been there forever and they have seen themselves as the permanent infrastructure. they would not be elected officials. they would be staff and people around the system. . don't think that would be better. i see the problems but i don't think the term limits are a solution. there is the way of calling it the deep state.

therefore, i think it is important that the people who remain overtime be elected not unelected. i also do think there is a real value in experience. there is such a thing as being a legislature. we do want people in congress who know what they're doingsl i don't think we should underestimate. some ways such people are less in the grip of the power of money they had built up their own constituency in their own authority over time. so on the hold before we run out of time i wanna read this e-mail. as of the continued growth of the federal government making the outcome more important. federalism is not taking seriously. we no longer had the freedom to experiment with different ways of doing things the

supreme court has power and none of the vision. they are moving to states and areas where like-minded people live. can our republic survived. a lot there. that raises a number of very important questions. i'm very much in grief that there is this paradox that we've had less and less trust government. and resources. and it certainly does seem to me this is a core argument that one way forward is by increasing the amount of power and authority that flows through our state and local government. it offers us away to turn into a strength rather than let it become a depilatory debilitating weakness for our democracy. i think government is more functional we should allow more governing to happen at

the state and local level.. it is a matter of constitutional privilege and a matter of basic political practice it would make a lot of sense for us to emphasize the ways in which differences can be expressed through a federalist system. w therefore is required different places. i think generally speaking we had been will served by our federal system in that crisis. it's something that could serve as well and a lot of other areas. jim, good afternoon. as you make a comment if i could. the northeastern minnesota for generations for people that settled the land both in southern minnesota as farmers.

and people who have the homestead act. i know a lot about the culture. i grew up a group in working-class home.e. the labour party and he was in mind as a young man h who wanted to go into politics. i find the irony to be incredibly sweet here. the regular conservatism. i just find it incredibly ironic that this city and say would have this explosion of violence and the horrible murder of this black man.s it seems to me the iron he says it all.

i go on about racism. to give you some real insight. my question to you is he said earlier he was at the age of eight. how does he explain. what is his explanation the jewish americans by and large. with the socialist marches but liberal philosophy in america politics. i just find it crazyzy. >> let's ask yuval levin if he cares to answer that question. on the first point about minneapolis it is a tragedy more than irony.

our entire country is rising up to respond to. there is certainly deep roots both in terms of ethnic politics in in terms of the tendency towards political radicalism among american jews. growing segments of orthodox jews. my community is diverse also. to appeal to the highest desperation's both parties are at their best when they do that. and i certainly see the kind of politics. if someone were to buy one of your books which one would you recommend.

you can't pick among them. it's like a parent. the book that has sold the best is the great debate. the other two we had been talking about. it is the fractured republic. for the past two hours. we greatly appreciate your time. thank you for c-span. and now unseat spin too. more television for serious readers. >> thank you so much for joining us today around the country and around the world i am currently the chief of staff at chicago teachers union but also high school history teacher missing my