Book Description Review “As Yuval Levin writes in his profound forthcoming book, A Time to Build, Trump is an example of a person who wasn’t formed by an institution. He is self-created and self-enclosed. He governs as a perpetual outsider, tweeting insults to members of his own cabinet. At its best, the impeachment process is an attempt to protect our institutions from his inability to obey the rules.”―David Brooks, New York Times“A Time to Build is exactly what America needs right now. A moving call to recommit to the great project of our common life. And from Yuval Levin, one of the most thoughtful and pertinent of our public intellectuals, who writes like a dream if dreams were always clear. What an encouraging book this is, and what an important one.”―Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal“A provocative, inspiring look at the underlying cause of our polarization and dysfunction.”―Kirkus“In his excellent forthcoming book A Time to Build, Yuval Levin discusses how we’ve degraded our institutions by not letting them shape and constrain us, but instead using them as mere platforms.”―Rich Lowry, National Review“A Time to Build diagnoses the decline of institutions as the source of many social ills, including loneliness and despair, that have been attributed to other causes.”―Mona Charen, National Review“Crisply written and characteristically thoughtful…”―Commentary“Mainstream Republicans dismayed by the current state of their party…will savor this well-reasoned and hopeful study.”―Publishers Weekly“In a political moment focused only on tearing down, Yuval Levin shows the necessity and the promise of institution-building. This book is an essential starting point toward an American renewal.”―Senator Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska)“Yuval Levin stands athwart the wrecking ball of anger that is smashing a democracy in desperate need of rebuilding and repair. A Time to Build sets forth an ambitious blueprint for how Americans can work together to strengthen broken institutions we cannot live without.”―Bruce Reed, chief of staff to former Vice President Joe Biden“There is a great deal of ruin in our society. Yuval Levin does not shrink from taking the full measure of our woes. But his counsel is not despair. This perceptive and important book sets an agenda for renewing the institutions we need in order to live and flourish together as Americans.”―R.R. Reno, editor of First Thing Read more About the Author Yuval Levin is director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute and the editor of National Affairs. A former member of the White House domestic policy staff under George W. Bush, he has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, among many other publications. His previous books include The Fractured Republic and The Great Debate. He lives in Maryland. Read more Customers Review: Good analysis, but buries the lead.Levin concludes that (1) we are led, and we will always be led, by an “elite;” and (2) to become better men and women, and, therefore, better leaders, the “elite” must decide to value more highly the moral and social contributions of “institutions.”Levin announces, at the outset, his conservative viewpoint: “The argument of this book is a conservative one of a particular sort. It begins from the premise that human beings are born as crooked creatures prone to waywardness and sin, that we therefore always require moral and social formation, and that such formation is what our institutions are for.”Describing the need for “institutions,” and his understanding of one difference between “liberal” and “conservative,” Levin writes: “The liberal ideal of freedom, which has often been at the core of our political imagination, is rooted in the premise that the choosing individual is the foundation of our social order. Liberating that person—whether from oppression, necessity, coercion, or constraint—has frequently been understood to be the foremost purpose of our politics. Our parties have argued about how to do it and about what kind of liberation the individual most desires or requires. But they have agreed, at least implicitly, that once properly liberated, that person could be free. There is of course a deeper, older idea of freedom that contends that, in order to be free, we need more than just to be liberated. We need to be formed for freedom—given the tools of judgment and character and habit to use our freedom responsibly and effectively. Such formation for freedom is a key part of what our institutions are for, starting with the family and spreading outward to the institutions through which we work, learn, worship, govern, and otherwise organize ourselves. But the idea that this should be required for freedom has never quite sat well with us, and so the idea that we need institutions never quite has either.”After reviewing the current institutional shortcomings of: all three branches of our government; the professions; the academy; the culture; the family; the religions and the communities, Levin synthesizes the most significant civilizational benefits formerly provided by institutions. These “might be broken down into just a few categories: they constrain and structure our activities; they embody our ideals in practice; they offer us an edifying path to belonging, social status, and recognition; and they help to legitimate authority.”It is this institutional benefit of legitimizing authority that addresses the demands of today’s populism: “populists are not anarchists. They demand liberation from oppressive authority because they want legitimate authority.”Today’s elites are more dangerous with authority because they believe they have won their authority through merit, rather than luck: “this new aristocracy is in some important respects less reticent about its own legitimacy than the old. Because each of its members must work to prove his or her merit—to pass the key tests and clear the key hurdles—today’s elite is more likely to believe it has earned its power and possesses it by right more than privilege. Because our elite as a whole has inclined to this view, it tends to impose fewer restraints on its use of authority and generally doesn’t identify itself with the sort of code of conduct that past aristocracies have at least claimed to uphold. Even when today’s elites devote themselves to public service, as many do, they tend not to see it as the fulfillment of an obligation to give back but rather as a demonstration of their own high-mindedness and merit.”Levin’s solution to this dilemma of illegitimate authority is to have the elite begin to think differently about the social and moral value of institutions, and expand and strengthen institutions, but Levin does not provide a compelling argument as to why the elite should do so.Levin also provides an interesting discussion of social media’s contribution to the decline of institutions.Finally, I thought it outrageous of Levin to include “journalists” within the category of “professionals” particularly after describing the professions as “characterized by some combination of formal training (often through professional schools or certifications), a set of institutional structures of which the profession is the guardian (like courts, hospitals, schools, churches, or labs), specialized knowledge, some degree of self-regulation, and an important social purpose that the profession exists to serve—which tends to yield a strong internal ethos among practitioners.”
In his “A Time to Build” Yuval Levin sets forth the premise that the crisis our country is confronting actually is a failure of our institutions. This failure, he explains, is due in part to the elites who now use our institutions as platforms for their own celebrity.A Time to Build itself builds on Levin’s earlier “The Fractured Republic” (2016). That book looked at the broader issues of the divisions in American life since the mid-twentieth century. Yuval Levin is the editor of National Affairs and is the director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute.His is not a right vs. left analysis. Levin does, however, tell us his basic view of man, a conservative one: “It begins from the premise that human beings are born as crooked creatures prone to waywardness and sin, that we therefore always require moral and social formation, and that such formation is what our institutions are for.” Institutions thus perform an important task. They form the people within them. They structure us and form our habits. Insiders, Levin posits, who have absorbed the ethic and ideals of the institution, are those who have been properly formed. The institution shapes behavior and character, building integrity. In this positive twist on the word, insiders are those hard-working individuals who have been formed in character by their institutional experience.Our society’s growing mistrust of institutions over the last half-century is well documented and has accelerated over the last 20 years. Polling on Americans’ trust in institutions from the 1970s through today, demonstrates the gradual decline at the end of the 20th century and the steep dive that has occurred in the first two decades of this century.The problem, at least according to Levin, is not merely that people have lost trust in institutions, but is how institutions have shifted from being primarily formative—molding the character of those who live and operate within them—to becoming a platform for individuals to call attention to themselves.Levin reviews the current shortcomings of some broad categories of institutions. The three branches of our federal government, universities, and religions are all very briefly touched on. He leaves it to the reader to “fill-in-the-blanks” when applying this analysis to one’s own organization.This reviewer found that Levin’s insights about the failure of institutions is well illustrated by the FBI. In defining an institution, he suggests that it must perform an important task. Certainly the FBI does; enforcing the law. He repeatedly stresses that the institution forms the people within it. It shapes behavior and character, building integrity. Certainly, the FBI did this under past directors. William Webster emphasized, that “we must do what the people expect of us, but in the manner that the constitution demands of us”. Louis Freeh emphasized, “the bright line” that could not be crossed into bad behavior. And even J Edgar Hoover admonished “don’t embarrass the Bureau” by your personal conduct. Levin tells us that institutions were trusted in the past because its people had absorbed its ethos. We trusted the FBI in the past because the people in the Bureau were formed in integrity as a core value. We are now losing faith in the FBI, as we no longer believe that the people within it are trustworthy. We have seen this with Peter Strzok, Andy McCabe, and James Comey. Their demonstrated abuse of power has undermined public trust in the FBI. And a law enforcement agency, in particular, depends on public trust to be effective in a democracy. Institutional dereliction, a theme of Levin’s, has occurred under recent FBI directors (Mueller and Comey), who had not focused on forming trustworthy people. In the past, each new agent was provided a pocket copy of the US Constitution. They were encouraged to keep it with them, next to their heart, so they would not go wrong. New agents are no longer provided a copy of the constitution. This is a small, but highly symbolic, example of this dereliction.Comey is the prime example of someone who has used the institution as a stage to elevate himself. His management style was remote and detached. Those who worked with him at the Bureau describe him as “floating above it all”. The distinct previous guardrails of the Bureau, e.g., caution in starting political investigations and briefing Congress on sensitive investigations, were ignored by him. And he continues to promote his own “holier than thou” celebrity.Levin provides examples of institutions, which try to mask the treachery of their people. The current FBI Director, Chris Wray, does this when he hides behind the IG finding that opening the case against the Trump campaign met the “very low” legal bar, even though it was not the “right” thing to do.An entire chapter is devoted to an examination of elites, who are often, but not always, synonymous with the “outsiders” who today use institutions as platforms for their own celebrity. Levin explores the old WASP elite, who were centered in the Northeast. This near-aristocracy was at the apex of American political, cultural, and economic life until the mid-twentieth century. Although some of them abused their positions, they did have a code of noblesse oblige, which was at least party rooted in their own realization that they were lucky to be born into this aristocracy. Today’s elites are the meritocracy who have passed all the tests. They are – in Levin’s crisp telling – far more dangerous because they believe they have won their positions through merit, rather than luck. The “new aristocracy is in some important respects less reticent about its own legitimacy” they believe that they possess power by right, rather than the privilege of the old WASP aristocracy. Because of this view, they tend to impose few restraints on their use of power and don’t have the code of conduct that the past aristocracy tried to uphold. When they do choose public service, they see it as a demonstration of their own merit, not as any noblesse oblige.Today’s meritocracy implicitly substitutes intellect for character. Often, they are the graduates of the elite schools who go on to use our institutions as platforms for their own celebrity. Levin, in his analysis, contrasts these elites with those who work their way up inside the institution, absorbing its values.In the recent contre-temps caused by the confluence of the revision of Roger Stone’s sentencing recommendation, the declination of Andrew McCabe’s prosecution, and the re-examination of the General Flynn matter, we can see the contrast between the outsider and the “worker-bee” insiders.President Trump, Levin observes, behaves like an outsider. He was not formed by any institutional experience. Previous presidents were either government officials or military officers – often both. Trump acts like an outsider when he pours gasoline on the current bonfire with his tweets complaining about the actions taken by his Attorney General and his Justice Department.Meanwhile, Attorney General William Barr, who has held numerous other posts inside the Justice Department, including having been AG once before, called on another “insider” to examine the General Flynn matter. Barr, who took four years to finish law school at George Washington University at night, while working full time, tasked Jeffrey B. Jensen, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, with the Flynn matter.Jeff Jensen spent ten years as an FBI agent. Those who knew and worked with him in the Bureau all use the word “character” when describing him. While working full time as an agent he attended St. Louis University Law School at night for five years. He then worked as an Assistant US Attorney for ten years. Appointed as the US Attorney in St. Louis by President Trump in 2017, Jensen is the quintessence of the insider worker bee.Earlier, Barr had designated another insider whose character was formed while absorbing the ethos of the institution, to investigate the origins of the Presidential probe started by the elitists. John Durham, now the US Attorney for Connecticut, spent some 35 years as an Assistant US Attorney. He is a graduate of the University of Connecticut Law School; no ivy tower.Insiders, in the sense of Yuval Levin’s very positive spin on that word, will help to save our important institutions from the damage done by the arrogant elites. Barr, Durham, and Jensen, men of character and not the ivy tower, are just what is needed now.In the hopefully prescient conclusion to “A Time to Build”, Levin writes “Abuses of power….are beginning to compel some real moments of reckoning”. This is what we should hope for from Barr’s team.Yuval Levin’s A Time to Build is a brilliant analysis, beautifully written.
The ignorant masses want to be “formed” by our betters so that we may avoid making mistakes. This can be done if only the genetically superior master race of the “best and brightest” adopts Levin’ s code of moral superiority. Condescending and offensive. |
7 reviews