The Fractured Republic: Renewing America's Social Contract in the Age of Individualism

by Yuval Levin Narrated by Kevin T. Collins

Overview

Americans today are frustrated and anxious. Our economy is sluggish and leaves workers insecure. Income inequality, cultural divisions, and political polarization increasingly pull us apart. Our governing institutions often seem paralyzed. And our politics has failed to rise to these challenges.

No wonder, then, that Americans - and the politicians who represent them - are overwhelmingly nostalgic for a better time. The Left looks back to the middle of the twentieth century, when unions were strong, large public programs promised to solve pressing social problems, and the movements for racial integration and sexual equality were advancing. The Right looks back to the Reagan Era, when deregulation and lower taxes spurred the economy, cultural traditionalism seemed resurgent, and America was confident and optimistic. Each side thinks returning to its golden age could solve America's problems.

In The Fractured Republic, Yuval Levin argues that this politics of nostalgia is failing twenty-first-century Americans. Both parties are blind to how America has changed over the past half century-as the large, consolidated institutions that once dominated our economy, politics, and culture have fragmented and become smaller, more diverse, and personalized. Individualism, dynamism, and liberalization have come at the cost of dwindling solidarity, cohesion, and social order. This has left us with more choices in every realm of life but less security, stability, and national unity.

Both our strengths and our weaknesses are therefore consequences of these changes. And the dysfunctions of our fragmented national life will need to be answered by the strengths of our decentralized, diverse, dynamic nation.

Levin argues that this calls for a modernizing politics that avoids both radical individualism and a centralizing statism and instead revives the middle layers of society - families and communities, schools and churches, charities and associations, local governments and markets. Through them, we can achieve not a single solution to the problems of our age, but multiple and tailored answers fitted to the daunting range of challenges we face and suited to enable an American revival.

Editorial Reviews

OCTOBER 2016 - AudioFile

Are you a conservative who yearns for the certainties of the Reagan era or a liberal who pines for the dynamic social issues of the 1960s? If so, then according to this audiobook, you are part of the problem. Narrator Kevin T. Collins has a soft, deep voice, but he infuses it with a sense of urgency and purpose that fits the tone of this book. America has changed dramatically, splintering into social, political, and ethnic groups whose problems demand a different approach. The author suggests a more vivid focus on social institutions to make us stronger. Collins reads slowly and deliberately, and he paces himself well. He pauses effectively, allowing listeners to consider the author’s meaning. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

03/28/2016
Levin (The Great Debate), founder and editor of National Affairs, examines America’s “subculture wars” in this disappointing book-length essay. He posits that the country’s economic and cultural fracturing, as seen in the rise of a two-class society and the polarization of politics, haunts all good-faith efforts at reform. Levin’s cautious analysis covers political ground that’s already been walked many times. His equivocal strategies for conservatives—such as presenting themselves as “an attractive minority in a nation of minorities”—have self-evidently limited political appeal. Levin critiques “expressive individualism” and multiculturalism, but in such muted ways that it’s hard to understand why he disapproves of them. Sober, abstract, and professorial, Levin’s book is nuanced and measured to the point of being bloodless. His high-minded reflections on first principles, fragmented institutions, and centralized power may impress establishment conservatives, especially those for whom Donald Trump and the Republican Party insurgency are a troubling surprise. But the rapid realignment of political sentiments amid election-year tumult makes Levin’s musings seem detached from current affairs. (May)

From the Publisher

"Yuval Levin is one of the most important conservative intellectuals of his generation, so his books are worth reading almost regardless of the topic. But The Fractured Republic stands on its own as an indispensable piece of work."—Jonah Goldberg

"A rich, nuanced history of the last 70 years... The Fractured Republic is an invaluable resource for understanding how America came to its present predicament and what must be done to rescue it."—Charles Murray, National Review

"Should be required reading for all those trying to understand contemporary America."—Financial Times

"Mr. Levin has done conservatism a service by reining in nostalgia. His writing is precise, well-observed and witty in a sober sort of way."—The Economist

"Mr. Levin is among the Republican Party's great intellectual leaders and has proposed a new direction for conservatism. We'll soon learn whether the party's political leaders follow his wise advice."—J.D. Vance, Wall Street Journal

"Useful in helping us understand why conservative intellectuals have been so intensely opposed to Donald Trump."—New York Times Book Review

"A devastating indictment of the welfare state and a good primer for effective conservative policymaking in the future."—Tevi Troy, National Review Online

OCTOBER 2016 - AudioFile

Are you a conservative who yearns for the certainties of the Reagan era or a liberal who pines for the dynamic social issues of the 1960s? If so, then according to this audiobook, you are part of the problem. Narrator Kevin T. Collins has a soft, deep voice, but he infuses it with a sense of urgency and purpose that fits the tone of this book. America has changed dramatically, splintering into social, political, and ethnic groups whose problems demand a different approach. The author suggests a more vivid focus on social institutions to make us stronger. Collins reads slowly and deliberately, and he paces himself well. He pauses effectively, allowing listeners to consider the author’s meaning. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2016-03-01
A voice of both reason and establishment conservatism offers a prescription for renewed political discourse and bipartisan action. You won't hear many liberals saying that conservative voices make for healthy political balance, or vice versa. Levin (The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left, 2013, etc.), founder of the journal National Affairs and a distinguished student of Edmund Burke, understands that a middle lies between left and right. The right tends to complaints of moral apocalypse and jeremiad: as the author notes, if you had told a conservative 60 years ago that out-of-wedlock birth would increase tenfold to the present, "he probably would have painted a nightmarish spectacle that would bear little resemblance to our relatively thriving society." Conversely, the left tends to alarmist talk about economic matters, especially inequality, "in ways that suggest that the sky could fall on our society any minute." Can there be middle ground? Yes, writes Levin, in ways that accommodate some of the best things about both traditions while decentralizing power to "create a constructive tension that can help us to make the most of democratic capitalism." The operative word is "constructive," and this in the place of what Levin criticizes as the tendency of both political wings to fall into golden-age nostalgia that does not admit of much action, the left for the 1960s and the right for the '80s. Some of the author's proposals are too lightly sketched to test, but they are interesting all the same. One example is his call to privatize certain public services but at the same time allow other public services to compete in the open market—allowing, for instance, post offices to double as banks, a note that Bernie Sanders has been sounding of late. Against "fracture and deconsolidation," Levin even suggests that "Right" and "Left" designations may not be useful. Refreshingly optimistic; in our diversity lies great strength, Levin writes, a strength that can be tapped once all the rancor is put aside. Highly recommended for readers of whatever political stripe.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173833617
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	08/23/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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