A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream

by Yuval Levin

Overview

A leading conservative intellectual argues that to renew America we must recommit to our institutions
Americans are living through a social crisis. Our politics is polarized and bitterly divided. Culture wars rage on campus, in the media, social media, and other arenas of our common life. And for too many Americans, alienation can descend into despair, weakening families and communities and even driving an explosion of opioid abuse.
Left and right alike have responded with populist anger at our institutions, and use only metaphors of destruction to describe the path forward: cleaning house, draining swamps. But, as Yuval Levin argues, this is a misguided prescription, rooted in a defective diagnosis. The social crisis we confront is defined not by an oppressive presence but by a debilitating absence of the forces that unite us and militate against alienation.
As Levin argues, now is not a time to tear down, but rather to build and rebuild by committing ourselves to the institutions around us. From the military to churches, from families to schools, these institutions provide the forms and structures we need to be free. By taking concrete steps to help them be more trustworthy, we can renew the ties that bind Americans to one another.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541699281
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	01/21/2020
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	NOOK Book
Sales rank:	498,666
File size:	2 MB

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I A Crisis of Dissolution

1 The Missing Links 11

2 From Molds to Platforms 29

Part II Institutions in Transition

3 We The People 45

4 Professional Help 69

5 Campus Cultures 89

6 The Informality Machine 117

7 Close To Home 137

Part III A Path to Renewal

8 The Case for Commitment 163

9 Beyond Meritocracy 181

Conclusion 199

Acknowledgments 205

Notes 209

Index 233

Editorial Reviews

11/25/2019

National Affairs editor Levin (The Fractured Republic) examines how American society lost faith in its institutions in the 21st century and proposes steps to renew the public trust in this sober, conservatively minded inquiry. According to Levin, durability and structure are the defining characteristics of such institutions as Congress, the mainstream press, universities, corporations, the family, and the rule of law. “By giving shape to our experience of life in society,” he writes, “institutions give shape to our place in the world.” Individuals lose trust in an institution, he contends, when it is internally corrupted or when it becomes a platform to display individuality rather than to mold character. Levin sees the effects of such institutional degradation in “culture-war politics,” declining marriage and birth rates, and white Evangelicals’ loyalty to President Trump. He calls on Americans to reform institutions from within by being more trustworthy, aligning their personal and institutional identities, and working harder to understand opposing viewpoints. The modesty of Levin’s proposals feels both refreshing and anticlimactic, and liberals are likely to find him too dismissive of the inequities that exist within institutions. Mainstream Republicans dismayed by the current state of their party, however, will savor this well-reasoned and hopeful study. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"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

"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 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

"In A Time to Build, one of the few mildly optimistic political books to come out in this winter of depressing ones, the conservative scholar (and editor of National Affairs) Yuval Levin argues for ... a comprehensive recommitment to American institutions - families and churches, academia and government - as an alternative to the current tendency to use them instrumentally, as a platform for partisan ambitions and personal desires."—Ross Douthat, New York Times


"The most thoughtful conservative theorist of his generation..."—Washington Post

From the Publisher

2019-10-28
The conservative political historian and founding National Affairs editor surveys a nation whose institutions are in crisis.

Continuing a project begun in 2016 with The Fractured Republic, Levin observes that contemporary Americans are "living through a social crisis," one that manifests in gridlock, bitterness, and "a culture war that seems increasingly to be dividing us into two armed camps angrily confronting each other in every corner and crevice of American life." It's not so much that we've lost faith in and patience with people who disagree with us, writes the author, but that we've witnessed the disintegration of the institutions that sustained us: journalism, which tends to an urban elitism; education, which imposes orthodoxies of political correctness; and government, which has descended into a cesspool of do-nothingism. Even after Richard Nixon left office in disgrace, he observes, more than half of Americans "expressed confidence in the presidency"; the current figure has fallen to a third. As for Congress, only 11% of respondents think it's doing anything positive—small wonder, Levin writes, since the members of that body "have come to understand themselves most fundamentally as players in a larger cultural ecosystem, the point of which is not legislating or governing but rather a kind of performative outrage for a partisan audience." It is perhaps to the benefits of the elites—who, Levin writes, used to number different casts of characters: one for education, one for politics, one for media, and the like, but who now largely comprise a single body—that Americans are divided and that institutions are weak. The revival of the pure, original notion of what our institutions are meant to do—the judiciary being a rare but not wholly uncompromised exception—"is essential to the revival of legitimate authority," the implication being that much present authority is not legitimate, and the charge falls on every citizen to do something about the mess by becoming active in reform.

A provocative, inspiring look at the underlying cause of our polarization and dysfunction.

Kirkus Reviews

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