>> John Haskell:
Welcome to the first
of the Kluge Center's
virtual series, Conversations
on the Future of Democracy.
I'm John Haskell, Director
of the Kluge Center
at the Library of Congress.
Our mission at the
Kluge Center is
to connect cutting edge
scholarship and policy making.
Today our guest is Yuval
Levin, a distinguished scholar
at the American Enterprise
Institute
where he's the director
of social cultural
and constitutional studies.
Yuval is also the editor of
National Affairs Magazine.
Welcome Yuval.
>> Yuval Levin: Thanks very
much for having me John.
>> John Haskell: We're going
to be discussing your new book,
which I have right here.
See if I can show it, yeah
I think you can read that,
A Time to Build, which
is an important look
at the critical role
of formative institutions
in society.
Their deterioration in recent
decades with practical steps
to begin addressing the problem.
Let's start with the basics,
Yuval when you're talking
about institutions in the book,
what do you mean
by institutions?
>> Yuval Levin: Yeah naturally
a broad capacious term
like that is hard to define.
And when you dive into
the academic literature
on the definition of
institutions you give
up pretty soon because
there's a very broad variety.
But in the book I try to
offer a fairly straightforward
definition that draws on
some of that academic work,
which focuses on the
challenges our society faces.
So by institutions I really
just mean the durable forms
of our common life.
The shapes and structures
of what we do together.
Institutions are the reasons
why we're not just clumps
of people in society.
We are people who are organized
into particular shapes and forms
to achieve particular goals.
So in the Library of
Congress the group of people
who work there are shaped into
particular roles and structures,
relationships, hierarchies
in order
to achieve the institutions
goal.
And all of societies
institutions ultimately work
that way.
So there are ways for
us to work together
to achieve common purposes.
>> John Haskell: So and as
a society like ours here
in the US, we think of
it as a society built
on concepts of individualism.
Even the primacy
of the individual
over against the larger society.
So perhaps a lot of
people like to think
that institutions
aren't as important here.
You argue against that point.
How do you argue that point?
>> Yuval Levin: Yeah absolutely,
that view is very deeply rooted
in the American psyche and
American political culture.
Our culture is rooted in a kind
of descending Protestantism
that identifies authenticity
with directness
and so doesn't want to think
about mediating layers.
And we prefer not to think
that we need institutions
in good times, that's great.
It helps us feel even more
free than we really are.
But in times of trouble and
we've been living through times
of trouble in this
century in America.
It's important to see
what institutions are
and what they do for us.
Ultimately they enable us to
be connected to work together,
to feel a sense of
affiliation and commonality.
They let us be social.
And if you ask yourself what
is the problem we're living
through in 21st century America?
Well before this dramatic
health crisis of course,
public health crisis the
problem has been something
like a social crisis.
A sense that people are
feeling isolated, alienated,
not part of our larger society.
That kind of failure
is not just a problem
that exists between individuals.
It is fundamentally an
institutionalist function.
Oftentimes when we try to
think about social problems
in American lives we
imagine American society
as this big open space
that's full of individuals
who are trying to connect.
And so we talk about
breaking down walls.
We talk about building bridges;
we talk about unifying visions
that might bring us together.
But in fact, American society
is not just a collection
of individuals.
American society is also a
collection of institutions,
of structures that hold us
together and I think that it is
in those structures which we
so often treat as invisible
that the problem is
actually been found in this.
>> John Haskell: It's almost as
though your argument is almost
as though we - we don't want to
admit what is obviously there
in the role that
institutions play.
Even - and we have a myth
and myths are important
that everybody is
on his own, her own.
Pull yourself up
by your bootstraps
and there's clearly an element
of that in our society too.
And that's really important,
but you can't even do all
of that without institutions.
That's kind of part
of your argument.
>> Yuval Levin: Absolutely,
the individualism that's part
of who we are is true
too and it matters.
That is a part of
the American story.
But the - the piece that
we're not seeing now
and where they're really
problems to fix now has to do
with what institutions
do for us.
And when we ignore institutions
we forget what they do for us.
And in the book I argue
an important piece
of what they do is formative.
Institutions shape us.
They take a human person who
enters the world not ready
to be part of civilized society
and they help to shape us
in ways that enable
us to function
and thrive in a free society.
The family does that
in obvious ways.
Schools do that in obvious ways.
But it's not just the
institutions built
around rearing children
that do that.
Every institution that we're
part of, where we work,
where we encounter each
other, where we pray.
Where we learn all of those
institutions and the ones
that allow us to function as
citizens, they all shape us.
They all form us; they
all create our character,
our understanding of
the world around us.
And so we need them to be
functional if we're going
to be able to thrive
in a free country.
>> John Haskell: So
taking a step back
to something you
mentioned before,
you talked about for lack
of a better term a general
malaise, an alienation.
And one can say well
that's kind of vague.
How do you actually know
institutions have deteriorated
in our society?
The question I wanted to throw
at you was is this
simply a matter in terms
of having some hard
data, if that -
if this even lends
itself to that.
Is this simply a
matter of citing polling
on the declining trust
and government, the media
and other authority
figures and religion etc.?
Or is there something else
we can hang our hat on.
I mean that stuff
is important, right?
>> Yuval Levin: It is important,
but I think there is
more to it than that.
We've been living through a
social crisis that's presented
itself in a variety
of different ways.
From - from debilitating
polarization and politics,
to an intense cultural
and all kinds of arenas
in American life, to what seemed
to be in the personal lives
of a lot of Americans this sense
of alienation and isolation,
that's not just evident
in polling.
It's evident in rising
suicide rates; it's evident
in the opioid addiction
explosion that we've seen
in parts of American society.
A sense that people are lacking
connection, lacking affiliation.
And then you also have
polling on American attitudes
about institutions, which
does tell a pretty stark
and string story where over a
period of decades we've gone
from really exceptionally
high levels of confidence
in our institutions, from
government to business world,
the academy, the
professions, religious life.
Americans in the 1970's
when Gallop started regularly
asking this question,
told pollsters that
they believed
that institutions did the
right thing most of the time
at very strikingly high levels.
Even Congress had levels of
public confidence that were
in the 40's and 50's - 40-50%.
The presidency in 1975 a year
after Richard Nixon resigned
in disgrace, 60% of Americans
said they had confidence
in the American presidency.
We've seen that just collapse.
And not just about
Congress in the presidency.
Trust in the healthcare
system, trust in universities,
your local school district.
Americans are much less trusting
of the institutions around them.
And when you combine that
with these broader problems,
a kind of sense of general
dysfunction in various parts
of society it seems like
part of the answer has to do
with what has happened
to our institutions.
It doesn't tell the whole story,
but I think it is
a key part of it.
>> John Haskell: So -
so in making your case,
in short form what exactly has
happened to the institutions?
>> Yuval Levin: Right,
so there are a number
of reasons why we might
lose trust in institutions.
I think you have to start
by asking what really is
trust in institutions?
What is it that we trust?
And that forces you to ask
again what institutions do.
I think a big part
of what we trust
about institutions
obviously has to do with -
with simple capacity
and competence.
We trust an institution
when it does its job well.
But there's another
element to it.
Institutions, because they form
people end up creating a kind
of ethic of integrity around
them that's distinct to them
so that as they perform an
important task in society,
educating children or enforcing
the law or providing us
with a good or a service.
They also shape the
people in them to perform
that task in a reliable way.
In a way we can trust.
You can see that in the
professions when they -
when they subject the people
in them to a certain kind
of ethic instead of rules,
a process, a procedure.
You can see it in a public
institution where it seems
to have a spirit of the
public interest about it.
That - that forms people
who take that seriously.
You can see it in a business
when it takes the trust
of its customers seriously.
I think in recent years
we've come to think
that our core institutions are
doing much less of that kind
of formation than
they ought to be.
Some of that is about
straightforward corruption,
institutions that fail to
engender that integrity
and therefore end up
protecting misbehavior,
when a bank cheats its
customers, when a member
of the clergy abuses a child.
That kind of corruption
obviously undermines public
confidence institutions,
but that's not new.
That's always been with us.
It doesn't simply explain
the change in recent decades.
There's another form of that
kind of loss of confidence,
that I think is especially
evident in our own time.
And that is when we come to
think of an institution less
as formative as shaping the
character of the people in it,
and more as performative.
As providing a platform for
those people who performed
to stand and be seen
and build a following
and build their own
brand as we say now.
When we think of
institutions as doing that,
rather than forming people,
just giving them a platform
to stand on, those institutions
inevitably become harder
to trust.
And I think once you start
looking across the range
of American institutions
from the political
to the professional and
the cultural and religious,
you find over and over that
institutions that ought
to be shaping people are being
used instead as platforms
for political performance art,
for cultural or for
other things.
But as platforms for building
personal brands rather
than for shaping people.
>> John Haskell:
And that's the -
I mean that's really the
crux of your argument.
What I find very interesting
about the book is
you take this -
this sense of the
performative function
that institutions
seem to now be taking.
And you track it through
specific institutions
in society.
I think people when they read
your book they'll find it
interesting what you have to say
about government, what you have
to say about the academy,
journalism, religion.
Why don't you take one or two
of those and we'll kind of run
with it, as to how this -
because this is your thesis.
That institutions are
now performance art,
they're not shaping people.
>> Yuval Levin: Right.
Yeah and you see that
in a variety of ways
in different arenas
in American life.
I think it's especially
evident in politics now.
President Trump is a kind
of performative attitude
about his job, whatever you
think about how he does his job.
He thinks of it as a platform
for himself and of himself
as a kind of commentator
in chief.
In a different way you find him
on Twitter for example tweeting
at the administration
rather than tweeting
on behalf of it you might say.
You certainly see this in
Congress in different ways
where particularly younger
members I think approach the
institution with a sense
that what it provides them is a
platform to be prominent actors
in the drama of our
political theater.
A way to build a following, a
way to get a better time slot
on cable news and social media,
or build a following
on social media.
As a way to be seen
and the effects
of that are pretty dramatic.
It means that what we find our
political leaders are people
who try to be speaking
on our behalf.
And often speaking as outsiders,
complaining about government
as we would complain
about government rather
than seeing themselves as
insiders and acting within it.
It's very prominent as well
in American journalism now,
one of the things that
journalism offers,
and really the professions in
general offer us is a standard
for judging the work
that people do.
At the core of journalism
is a process.
A process of editing
and verification
that lets us have
some confidence
that what we're hearing or
seeing is more than a rumor.
And that's what the institutions
of journalism really do
but now especially in elite
political journalism you find a
lot of practitioners
taking themselves
out of those institutions
and placing themselves
as individuals on a platform,
on Twitter, maybe on cable news.
And basically blurring the line
between their journalistic work
and their opinions and
their personalities
in order to build a following.
In order to build
their own brand.
There's enormous value in this
for the institutions
they work for,
because they get more
viewers and readers that way.
But there's also an
enormous problem with this
from an institutional point of
view, because it makes it hard
to know what - when you're
hearing the institution speak
and when you're hearing
the individual speak.
And a lot of it is a
kind of celebrity culture
within political journalism,
especially using social media.
You find a similar pattern
in the American university
and in American religion.
Part of the argument of the
book is that what's happening
in the university and
in a lot of churches
in America is actually kind
of mirror images of each other
from the left and right.
Where institutions that are
intended to form people's souls
or intellect instead are
being used as platforms
for political commentary or
for fighting the cultural war.
And there's room for that.
It's not that it's completely
out of place but when it takes
over the role of the university
or of the church it leaves us
without institutions that
play those crucial roles
and again it makes it
hard for us to know what
to trust and who to believe.
And it robs society of some
very important institutional
functions that are
more significant
than just more political
commentary.
>> John Haskell: The thing
that struck me as I was going
through the sections or
chapters you had on the academy
and journalism, religion,
government.
That you were alleging
that the prominent people
in these fields were
damaging the institutions
that made them important.
So if I've got that right,
how long can that go on?
I mean I guess it's kind
of on the edge now if none
of us trusts these - or so few
of us trust these institutions.
>> Yuval Levin: Yeah I think
it's an enormous problem.
>> John Haskell: How
useful is your platform if -
if the institutions
have no credibility?
>> Yuval Levin: I think
it's a huge problem
in a number of ways.
One is as you suggest that
it's kind of self-defeating.
After a while if no one
takes Congress seriously,
then being a member of Congress
just isn't that impressive
as a way to be heard in society.
But there's a deeper
problem I think too.
Which is that as you
undermine the capacity
of these institutions
to do their work
and to build public trust, you
make it much more difficult
for society to have any
confidence in anyone,
and so all of the - of
the various platforms
that different people have
in our society themselves
become discredited.
And you have a kind of
cynicism that builds on itself.
And ultimately, particularly
when institutional
players just play the role
of cynical complainers
themselves, when members
of Congress just spend
all their time in front
of cameras saying you wouldn't
believe how bad it is here
in this place.
Which is what a lot
of members do now,
when the president spends
all his time complaining
about government.
It becomes very difficult to
know why we should take anybody
or anything seriously
in America.
And the deeper social
dysfunctions that we're living
through all become
worse in that way.
So I certainly worry that
this is a vicious cycle.
It somehow has to
be interrupted.
And one of the purposes of the
book is to surface this problem
in a way that could allow
people to put a name to it,
to understand what it is
that's gone wrong in a way
that might help them
change their own behavior.
Whether they're prominent
figures in national institutions
or whether they're - they're
just people with a role
in a local institution
who might stop and think
about what they're doing
in terms of the integrity
of that institution,
the capacity
of the people it
serves trust it.
I think it's important for
all of us to see things
in these terms so that we know
a little bit better what needs
healing and where the
problems really are.
>> John Haskell:
Yeah it's interesting
that whether the people
let's say at the -
at the major media institutions,
whether it's newspapers
or New York Times or
something or in the networks.
Or people in the academy
who clearly want to think
of themselves in
prestigious positions
but you can already
see the polling data
that people don't trust.
Experts in the academy or the
major media, there's a lot
of people that don't trust them.
Are - is this an
unwitting thing?
Are - are prominent people not
aware of the fact in your view
that they're - the
damage is happening here?
>> Yuval Levin: Well I think
that's a complicated question.
So certainly in some ways a lot
of prominent people in a lot
of core institutions are aware
that things aren't going well.
People in the academy know that
we're living through a kind
of crisis of the academy.
I think a lot of
members of Congress know
that there's something wrong
with how Congress
is functioning now.
We're not happy with it.
But I think to connect
that to their own behavior,
to see that by treating
their work per formatively,
by thinking of themselves as
acting for an audience rather
than as playing an inside role
in important institutions
they're contributing
to that problem.
I think that is less obvious
and it's less obvious in part
because we just don't really
think about institutions
that way in American life.
As we said when we began there's
- there's a tendency we have
to see through institutions, to
treat them as invisible and so
to understand ourselves
fundamentally
in individualistic terms,
so that when the problem we
face is an institutional problem
as I think in many
ways it is now.
It is hard for a lot
of us to diagnose it,
to really see what part we're
playing in causing this problem
and what we might do to help.
>> John Haskell: And - and
you have a chapter that gets
into the development of a
- of a new way of thinking
about the elite in our society.
It's not really that
new anymore.
Okay, it's a long thing.
But it's - you know you
argue that our elite,
the people that come out of the
- out of the great universities
and colleges, the most
prestigious ones anyway.
The elite doesn't see
itself as restrained
by institutional norms.
In a way that an elite in
another day perhaps did, right?
>> Yuval Levin: Yeah I mean
that older elite had
its own problems.
And they needed to be addressed.
Those problems had
to do especially
with the exclusive character
of the American elite,
to sort of lost elite
that was open
to a very narrow sliver
of American society.
And obviously in a
democratic society
that increasingly was opening
itself up to its own diversity,
that became untenable
and illegitimate
and it rightly did
need to change.
The way in which it
changed took the form
of what we now call meritocracy.
Opening up our institutions
especially through the path
of higher education, the people
qualify in different terms
than who their parents are,
but who might qualify in terms
of a capacity to make the most
of an elite education passing
certain tests which are
in a sense objective tests and
our elite began to open itself
up to women, to racial
minorities,
to religious minorities.
I think this was a great thing.
It was necessary and the fact
that it's happened is
very good for America.
But we also have to see that
when we define our elite
in meritocratic terms
we're answering the problem
that arises when it comes to
how people can enter the elite.
And that is one challenge to
elite legitimacy in a democracy.
There's another challenge,
which we think of less now
and that is the challenge
of how the elite can be seen
to be using the power it
has in legitimate terms.
Not just who gets to be there,
but what they do
when they're there.
The meritocracy sort of
blinds us to this problem
because it leads people to
think that they belong there.
That they pass the test,
they did the work,
they paid their dues.
And so the positions
of authority they have
in important American
institutions are merited.
But of course the
- the expectation
that a democratic
society needs to have
of its elites is not just
that they'll be there
because they pass the test.
It's that they'll be there
because they're serving some
important role for society;
they're using their power in a
restrained and legitimate way.
And strong institutions
can help us to do that.
They can help give people roles
that are somehow connected
to public service or are
connected to a public purpose.
And so when we think
of ourselves institutionally
we tend to restrain ourselves.
We ask given the role
that I have here,
how should I be behaving?
And that answer is often
about self-restraint.
When we don't ask that
now in meritocratic elite,
we create legitimacy problem.
And I think there's no question
that the American elite
faces legitimacy problem.
It has to stop thinking of
that problem only in terms
of who gets in and
start thinking more
in terms of what they do.
And to me that means again
thinking in institutional terms.
Understanding ourselves through
the integrity of a profession
of public service,
of community service.
All of those things require
a sense of the institutional
that I just think needs to be
resurfaced in American life,
and that's part of what
the book tries to -
>> John Haskell: And that's
irrespective of elite status
so to speak or meritocratic.
>> Yuval Levin: Absolutely.
>> John Haskell:
The pinnacle there.
So the American Enterprise
Institute where you're now one
of the - part of the leadership
has put out a comprehensive
and very widely respected
document on responding
to the Covid 19 pandemic.
How do you look at your
book, your thesis which was
of course written and completed
well before the pandemic
in light of this crisis?
>> Yuval Levin: Yeah,
well you know one -
one way in which it connects is
that we approach this crisis.
We came to it with
already a real crisis
of confidence in America.
That among other
things expresses itself
in a lack of trust.
In a sense that people
in positions
of authority are serving
their own ends and interests
and are not to be trusted
by the larger public.
That problem, which is a
problem becomes a real crisis
in moments of emergency.
In times of national emergency
we have to be able to look
to people in positions
of leadership,
people in positions
of authority.
And we have to be able to say
that we trust what they say
and so we're going to act as
they suggest or as they require.
I think it's very difficult to
do that in a - in the middle
of a crisis of trust like this.
And so that helps us to
see why it's important
to address these
underlying problems.
To think about how we can
rebuild some confidence
in our leaders and
in our institutions.
It also forces us to ask whether
we might come out of this crisis
with a little bit more
of a serious attitude
about our institutions,
about our leaders
when we've seen now
why it's important
to have a greater
level of trust.
Maybe we come away with this
an idea that the frivolity
of the last few years in our
politics might just be unworthy
of American public life.
And might force us to think
a little more seriously
about politics.
That's the hopefully way
of thinking about it.
It might also be that we come
out of this crisis more divided
with a greater sense that people
in authority can't be trusted.
It's too soon to say.
I think both options
are really before us
and among other things
it's important that people
with power understand themselves
in institutional terms in ways
that can help them build
that trust right now.
>> John Haskell: Yeah
they need to step
up in other words is one way.
>> Yuval Levin: Absolutely.
In some ways we all
need to step up.
But especially people in
positions of leadership need
to see this as a time
when they have to step up.
>> John Haskell: And you know
going back to 9/11 which you
and I for example were
both in Washington then.
But it didn't matter
where you were in the US.
I kind of at the time thought
well gosh this could be the
opportunity for our leadership
and government particular
to get past the culture
wars and that lasted
for less than a year really.
And is there a reason to
think that this is different?
That the ongoing battle of
the culture wars which is
so important in what you
talk about in your book.
There's a better
chance of getting past
that in the current situation.
>> Yuval Levin: Well I think
there's some reason to think
that in part because this
really affects everyone
in one way or another.
It has changed the life of
essentially every American
in a way that 9/11, for people
outside of New York and DC
and positions of -
and the military.
9/11 wasn't that transformative.
It made us stop for a minute
and then most people were able
to resume more or
less where they were
in our politics pretty
quickly picked
up its partisan trajectory.
Maybe this crisis because it's
so much more far reaching
might change that.
I also think it's going to
be followed, is already begun
to be followed by a
dramatic economic crisis
that just isn't going to go
away as quickly as the one
that we confronted
after 9/11 and so
in some ways I think
we'll change our culture
in more profound ways.
But obviously there are also
reasons to worry that at the end
of this we go right
back to our politics.
We're in an election year;
it's going to unavoidably
be a partisan election.
That's in the nature
of elections
and so you can imagine
our politics going back
to its 21st century
instincts here
and not using this moment
as a time of change.
But I think one way or another
this crisis is going to usher
in a new phase in
American political life.
It does feel to me like a
moment of transformation
that doesn't mean it's
going to be a good thing.
But I think that we're
living in a time now
that will really matter and will
be looked at as the beginning
of a stage in American politics.
>> John Haskell: And just
to kind of wrap up I wanted
to give you a chance to - you
touched on it in different ways
but to talk about your last
chapter where you acknowledge
that - that your book is about
a very thorough going problem,
to say the least.
And you have an answer.
I mean it's not an easy
answer, but you have an answer.
Can you summarize that for us?
>> Yuval Levin: You know it's -
books like this often have a
final chapter where having laid
out some big problem it turns
out the solution is what
the authors always wanted
out of politics.
And here's a 10 point agenda.
This book doesn't have
a chapter like that.
I don't think there's a 10 point
agenda here or a list of things
that Congress should pass.
The change has to begin
with a change of attitude.
And so it does begin with that
question I mentioned earlier.
The great unasked question
of American life in this,
which is given my role
here how should I behave?
As president or member of
Congress, as an employer
or worker, as a professor
as a lawyer, as a pastor
or a neighbor, what
should I do here.
Given that role, I think we
all have to start with that
because any other reforms of
institutions and I do talk
about institutional reforms
would have to begin with people
within our institutions
recognizing
that they are part
of the problem.
And that's hard for all of
us, so I think it has to begin
with a change of attitude
that starts with something
like the question, and then from
there there are ways for each
of us to see our path to
some institutional reforms.
So in Congress for example
that means that changing
of incentives, breaking up the
consolidated budget process
for instance that just
gives members a lot
of performative incentives and
giving them more work to do,
more concrete ongoing work to do
that focuses them on legislation
that allows them to
rise to prominence
by being legislators rather
than by being celebrities.
There are ways of thinking about
the academy in this way too.
There are ways of thinking
about many institutions
in American life.
Once you have grasped that
the problem is institutional
in this way you can think
about reforms but you need more
than a reform agenda
because ultimately a change
of mindset has to be the first
stage and that is certainly
where the final chapter
of the book begins.
>> John Haskell: Yuval I
just want to again thank you
for joining us here at the
Library for our conversations
on the future of
Democracy series.
We appreciate your time.
And we wish you the best in
this - in this difficult crisis.
>> Yuval Levin: Well
thank you very much.
And that's for everything
the Library does.
>> John Haskell:
Thank you Yuval.
