Levin. I want to thank you all for coming to politics and prose im preventing humor week hosts closer thousand events. Year. Something that is confirmed for the next three months you can go ahead and visit our website or pick up our events calendar. Before i get started today are like tosk ask everyone to silence yourur cell phones, so as not to disrupt the event. And when its time for the q a i would ask you to come up to this microphone right here, next to the pillar, and please speak clearly into the microphone as we areec recording it and cspan book tv is here as well. On the q and a we will have a signing. This table if you havent already purchased this book will have the books up at the register. So tonight i am excited to welcome yuval levin celebrating his newest book, a time to build. How we commit to institutions as nations have increased divisiveness, fueled by partisan politics, culture wars, and populist anger on both sides. Yuval levin says instead of trying to tear down frameworks we should be looking to them as sources of strength and support. Through a time to build, it shows our Current Crisis is due to an oppressive force which is the absence of uniting forces and urges us to commit ourselves to urge the vitality of institutions rage thing from the family, to churches, to the military to renew our ties to each other. He is the Founding Editor of national affairs, director of sulzer, cultural, constitutional studies at the American Enterprise institute, contribute in editor of national review, cofounder and Senior Editor of the new atlantis, and has authored the fractured republic and the great debate. His essays and articles have appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times wall street journal, among many others so please join me to it welcoming politics and prose yuval levin. [applause] thank you very much i think you the welcome and you being here on a friday night. I am excited to chat a little bit about this book and what it might say to the moment it takes a little work to understand. Its a book about what has gone wrong in our country in recent years and what we can do about it something has gone wrong is reasonably clear but exactly what it is is not as clear as we think imagine or pretend. We americans are in a sense living through a social crisis. We can see that in everything from vicious partisan polarization to rapid cultural resentments. An upsurge of isolation, alienation, despair that is sent suicide rates climbing into an epidemic of opioid abuse in recent years. These are deep dysfunctions and seemingly parts of our society. What they have some common roots and its not easy to say exactly what those routes are. What exactly has gone wrong here. Part of the crisis, one of the symptoms as we cannot quite seem ton get a handle on just what that is. Traditionally economic concerns dont really cut it as explanations. Wegh certainly went through a severe recession in 2007 and 2008 but that ended more than a decade ago and now weve been living through one of the longest economic expansions in the economic era. Its not that some americans arent suffering economically, but the problems we have on that front dont really add up to the enormous crisis we are going through. Other familiar kinds of measures of wellbeing dont offer obvious explanations either. Americans are as healthy andan safe as they might have been. You might say what are we complaining about . In fact some people argue that they will just take anything to complain about or the frustration and anxiety that overwhelms us now are rooted in some imaginary grievances driven by our politics that they themselves might be the problem. Steven pinkard of harvard takes these kind of complaints to be what he described as irritable gestures of selfindulgence and gratitude in a recent book he looks over mountains of data on wealth and health and safety and choice. And he concludes the populace complaints on all sides of the politics are just detached from reality. He says they are dangerous to quote his indiscriminate pessimism can lead to fatalism, to wondering why we should throw time and money at a hopeless cause in leading to radicalism called to smash the machine or drain the swamp or empower a tyrant. But surely, all those these kinds of responses are understandable in part, public frustration is not some kind of selfdelusion. Especially frustration that runs this deed that reveals itself in such a broad range of symptoms. Tinkers happy data are not wrong exactly and neither are the indicators but if these dont explain the sediments of our time than we should ask what are those types of indicators ignoring what signs might we be missing . Our usual measures of wealth, fhealth, personal freedom dont explain the problem because familiar indicators, is as important as they arent understanding our society, are largely material individual. Lthey assess our wellbeing on her own. But none of us can actually experience wellbeing on her own. Its exactly the joints of society, the junctures of individuals the interstices of life that the trouble really shows itself. One way to put that point is that many of our struggles seem rooted in relational problems. Loneliness and isolation, mistrust and suspicion, alienation and polarization. These the kinds of problems we have now. Aand they are failures of sociality. They fell into a blind spot for a very individualist culture. So how do we explain it crisis of connectednessec like this . Some people argue the trouble is fundamental is philosophical, metaphysical that liberalism hasil failed they say because it fails to offer us a sufficient vocabulary for solidarity. Other people say that although traditional measures of growth and prosperity might look fine, our problem is still economic in a deeper sense. Its socioeconomic. They say contemporary capitalism creates levels of eluainequality that make it impossible for people to feel like equal parts of a larger hole or to believe in legitimacy of our Political Economic order. Other people suggest that external pressures like trade or immigration or internal pressures like racism or identity politics, have left this incapable of hanging together. There is someet truth to all of these things. They all get something important right because they treat the human person as embedded in a larger whole. Whether its metaphysical, moral, social economic and wey see whats wrong now something to do with the way we live out. But were still missing something crucial. We think about our problems in these ways, we tend to imagine our society as a vast open space thats full of people who are linking hands. So we talk about breaking down walls, or building bridges, orie leveling playing fields, casting some kind of unified narrative. But theres a missing step between joining together and recovering belonging, trust, and legitimacy. What we are missing although we really put it this way is a structure, shape for our social life. Oh wait to give purpose and concrete meaning and identity to things we do together. If American Life is a big open space, it b is not a space filled with individuals, but a space filled with structures of social life. Its a space filled with institution. And if we are too often failing to foster belonging egand, moral failure of a connection we confront the failure of institutions. They do a lot more than connect us. An understanding or social crisis in terms of what they are what they do, helps us to see the crisis in a new light. Thats the understanding really that this book tries to advance. So what is an institution . It wont surprise you to learn that there are a lot of different academic definitions of the term. The book thanks there are a few of these but for our purposes im in a talk about a general definition that draws together a lot of the Academic Work but looks towards the we confront in our society now. By institutions i mean the forms of our common life. Thee shapes, the structures of what we do together. Some institutions are really organizations, they have Something Like a corporate form, university or hospital or school or business or civic association. These are all institutions that they are technically dgally formalized. Some institutions are durable forms of a different kind. They may be shaped by laws, norms, rules. Though without a corporate structure, the family for example as an institution and sometimes it is the first and foremost institution of our society. We could talk about the institution of marriage or particular tradition, a profession of the institution, the rule of law itself as an institution. That they are durable as essential an institution keeps its general shape over time so it shapes the realm of life in which it might be r set to operate. Llusually changes only very gradually andad incrementally. Flash mobs dont count and institutions. Ibut most important and whats distinct about institution is its a form in the deepest sense, a form as a structure, contour, its the shape of the whole, the organization speaks of its purpose, p its logic, its function and its meaning. Its a social form is not just a bunch of a people, but its a bunch of people order together to achieve a p purpose, to pursue a goal, to advance an ideal. And that means institutions are also by their nature formative. They structure our interactions and as a result of that they structure us. They shape our habits, our expectations, ultimately they shape our character. They shape our souls. They helped to form us. And that formative role has a lot to do with how institutions relate to the social crisis reliving there now. Limit that word about that. We think about the role of institutions in america live now, we might tend to think first about our loss of trust or confidence in the institutions. We talk about that a lot, its a trend we hear a lot about. Measures of it are very easy to find and they painted very grim picture. Gallants have kept track of this for decades in most cases star doing this in the early 1970s and continues to do it on a regular basis. That trend in those figures is unmistakable from big business and banks and professions to the branch of the federal, the news media the academy is founded confidence and our constitutions have been plummeting consistently. Nearly 80 of the american said they had a great dealer quite a bit of confidence in doctors and hospitals for example. That figure blasters 37 . Forty years ago 65 of americans said they had a great deal are quite a bit of confidence in organized religion. Laster less than 40 said that. 60 ofss americans hadls confidence in a Public Schools in the early 70s, just about a third did last year. Even in 1975, one year after Richard Nixon did reside in disgrace, 52 of americans are sparse confidence in the presidency. Laster is 32 . They found that 42 the public had confidence in congress in 1970s, last year that figures 12 and even that seems really high and you have to wonder who are these people that say they have confidence in congress. This pattern holds for just about all of the institutions. The military is the only major exception will speak about that in a Second Period but the overall trend is really unmistakable. The American Public is gone for extraordinary levels of confidence in our major institutions to really striking levels of mistrust. But what do actually mean when we say we dont trust institutions . I thinkon the answer has a lot to do with what institutions really are andit do. Ed takes us back to the question of how they form us. Every Significant Institution carries out an important task in society. Its educating children, enforcing the law, serving the tpoor, just providing some service and making some products. Meeting a need we have. They do that by establishing a structure in a process, a form for combining peoples efforts to accomplish that task. But in the process that institution also forms those people to carry out that task effectively and responsiblyop and reliably. It shapes the people within it to beth trustworthy. That is what it means to trust and institution. We trust an institution when it has an ethic that makes the people within it more trustworthy. So we might trust a Political Institution when it takes seriously and obligation to the public interest. And forms the people in it to do the same. We trust the military because it values courage and honor and duty in carrying out the defense of the country. And it clearly shapes people who do that too. We trust the business because it promises quality and integrity in meetings and need we have in seems to reward its people when they deliver those. We trust the school because it builds a culture that makes his people devoted to learning and teaching and making kids happy and t safe. We trust the Journalistic Institution for example for it has high standards of honesty or accuracy in reporting the news, and that makes its people reliable. We lose faith in an institution we no longer believe that it plays that kind of ethical or formative role. Shaping the people within it to be trustworthy. One way that can happen is when an institution claims to enforce an ethic of responsibility but plainly fails to do that. Instead shielding and empowering bad behavior. Like when a bank cheats its customer or when a member of the clergy abuse as a child. That kind of gross abuse of power obviously undermines public trust in institutions. It is a familiar form of the corruption, but it ison not new, there are plenty of examples of inner time. So it doesnt quite explain the distinctive loss of confidence in institutions in our own day. But another related but different way in which institution could lose our trust, as when itru just fails to impose an ethic on the people within it altogether. Doesnt seem to see that kind of formation as its purpose. When the people in the institution no longer see it as a mold of its character and behavior, just as a platform for themselves to perform on, to raise their profile, to be seen in society. An institution like that, seems to be b worthy of your trust, not because failed to earn it becausest it doesnt seek it or desire appear to think Something Like that has been happening to a lot of her institutions in American Life in the last few decades. We dont think of our institutions as formative but performative. When the presidency and congress are just stages for performing political outrage. When University Becomes a venue for verdure signaling on one side or the other. When journalism is indistinguishable from activism from one side or the other. When the Church Becomes a political stage, they become a lot harder to trust. Because they are not really asking for a trust or just asking for our attention. And in our time, a lot of the most significant social and political and cultural and celestial institutions in our country or in the process of going through this type of transformation. For multiplatform. The few exceptions, most notably the military the most formative institution prove that rule because they tend to be the few institutions in which we arent losing faith. And many of the truly novel institutions of the 201st century and especially the virtual institutions of social media are inherently shaped as platforms. And not as molds. It would be strange to trust a platform a and we generally atdont. And that change of attitude that the client and the expectations should be formative of the people in them is at the heart of our loss of faith in the institution. Is that turn the heart of the broader social crisis because institutions understand as platforms or molds. Its a stage to perform on more than a means to perform and shape our character. Theyff are less able to offer subjects of loyalty subjects of legitimacy, ways of Building Mutual trust. Examples of this mold to platform transformation is all around us if you start looking for them. Our institutions are putting into lat forms but for performance but a formative virtue and outrage in that vast polarized cultural war that t is so much of our societies living through. In one institution after another be fine people who ought to think of themselves as insiders, shaped by distinct purpose and integrity of the institution there in instead functioning as outsiders displaying themselves, building their own personal grand. This is obvious in politics, is there any doubt that donald trump sees the presidency at the stage for performing an outrage . And himself as a performer acting on it rather than an executive acting in and through it. What exactlyhe is he doing when he tweets his displeasure at something that Department Justice is done for example the department of Justice Works for him. If he had a sense of his job is shaped by constitutional contours he would direct to the executive branch rather than complain about it. Maybe its a good thing he doesnt know he can do that, but he could and a president normally would. As sense of his job is yet another stage for the reality intent Reality Television show his life has been for so long. As ernie questioned the same time that many members of congress of both parties now run for office last to be involved in legislative work and more to have a prominent platform and the culture wars, to be very visible on cable news, talk on radio or will the bigger media following to build their office uses a platform to complain for the variouson institution they try so hard to enter. They see that is what their voters want so they are always performing for their core partisan audience. Our two Major Political parties now, really anything other than to platforms for performance. Do they have a function other than to display and elevate narcissism . Do we even remember the role of the clinical parties are supposed to be at this point . Look at the perfect journalism as an example its institutional strength is its insistence on informative integrity. On a process of editing and verification that helps us to be sure that what provides is areliable. But today a lot of lead journalist constantly step outside of those institutional constraints it addressed the public directly with social media or on cable news. Buildingab their own personal brands on a platform rather than participating in the work of the institutions. If you look at twitter right now you would find a lot of professional reporters effectively d professionalizing themselves. Journalists who are inclined to complain about how donald trump has behaved an obvious should consider whether trumps behavior relative to what the presidency is a might be ehunnervingly similar to behavior a lot of leading political journalists relative to what journalism is. Both are playing out a celebrity version of the real thing. In both cases it renders them less able to do their appropriate and very important work. You can see the same pattern in the academy in some ways rather than serving the institutional purpose of the university, which is to form some portion of the rising generation for teaching and learning, wein find a lot of people knew university using it as a platform for virtual signaling or foras political cultural theatrics. Theres a version of the same thing and portions of American Religion were institutions that resist a form and transform souls are being used instead as platforms for political theater, for cultural war dramas of the cachet of the church is useless to form those within it than to express themselves. We can see that pattern throughout American Life. That distortion of institutionalism amounts and practice to the great unasked question of our time. Given my role here, how should i behave . Thats a someone who takes an institution involved with would ask. And a lot of the trouble that faces our core institutions now could be described as a widespread failure to ask that simple kind of question. Given my role here, how should i behave . As a president , as a member of congress, as a teacher or scientist as a pastor or a worker or parent or neighbor, which i do here . I would bet that the people you most respect these days seem to ask that kind of question before they make important judgments. And iak would bet that the people who drive you crazy to think a really part of the problem in america seem to somehow fail to ask that sort of question when they should. So that we always find ourselves thinking how could that person have done that . Given what their responsibilities are. Thats one way to understand the transformation of her expectations of institutions because so much to do with the broader set of problems we are dealing with. The transformation is left a lot of americans with the sense that her institution cant be trusted, that they arent in the business of earning trust. And that has left us short of sources of formation, belonging, legitimacy, social cohesion. That problem doesnt simply explain the social crisis we are living there of course, but its one important factor behindfa the crisis that we are particularly likely to miss or to ignore, because we just arent very good at seeing institutions and grasping what theyre for. We see through them in normal times like the air. We only noticed it when something ise wrong, and something is wrong now. So what can we do about it . Books like this very often have a final chapter where they have some sort of complicated problem. The author offers an agenda and it turns out this moment calls for whatever that author has always wanted. And thats true this book calls for whatever avoids wanted to. But this book doesnt really have a chapter like that because i think dealing with this kind of problem requires to begin with a change of mindset. Witnessing failures ofe responsibility,f somebody of our institutions, we are tempted to a disposition to demolish, uproot and we are tempted to conclude only outsiders can save us. Thats why so much energy of our politics is spent tearing down supposedly powerful establishments. In fact we dont need more outsiders who pretend their critics with no power to ask. We need more insiders, institutionalists who will be earnest both in their works to build frameworks and common action in their acceptance of the duties. Those duties that accompany power. Those outside have the most power of our leaders and elites need to especially resist the urge that to pretend they are outsiders and so many of them do so often now. Evbut everyone else does too. Instead we should all try to embrace responsibilities that come with whatever positions we do hold. We should ensure that obligation and restraints actually protect and empower us. We need to inhabit the institutions we are each a part of, to love them and necessary reform them t and make them more lovely to other people too. We need to understand ourselves as formed by these institutions and to act accordingly. To ask ourselves in little moments of decision not just what i want, but what should i do given here my role or position . Questions like these might seemed like an awful small response to thee enormous problems that i started with, and of course there areob only a start. But they are how we can begin to work towards a change of mindset and they can add up and make a difference. If our leaders asked them more often our politics to be improved a lot. If a professionals in many fields thought this way little bit more, it would be easier to trust their expertise, to accept their claims to authority. Ifhe the paper bowl participating all the institutions are part of tried to think this way, it would be easier to feel that we belong to something worthwhile. That sort of change of mindset is not a substitute for institutional reform. It is an essential prerequisite for. And we do need Institutional Reforms. I want to be clear that i dont think the problem is to beth solved if the people dont trust institutions enough, the problem to be solved is that our institutions are not trustworthy enough. Its also important to recognize that there are some serious reasons to be careful and skeptical about institutions in American Society. There obviously a lot of ways with institutions can be oppressive, they limit our freedom of choice, they impose hierarchies honest, they can be slow to change and hard to move. More than that some institutions in our society can literally be oppressive. The term institutionalized racism is not a metaphor, its a reality of American Life. The disposition it against strong institutions rose for serious reasons. The arguments for transparency for individualism as a corrective to excessively r collective and imperious institutionals. Words like that are serious they need to be heated. We have to see that populism and individual into an anti institutionalism also involve serious tradeoffs. Institutions can be a terrible oppressive and yet we cant do without them. Its true that they can reinforce the rule of the strong or the privilege in our society. But i its also true that without functional institutions we have no hope of vindicating their rights. Our institutions are sometimes embody oppression, certainly but they can also embody our highest ideals. To defend institutions is not to defend the status quo or ute strong, or the privilege. Functional institutions are most important for people who dont have power or privilege. Those who do find that whatever happens in our institutions can become colder bureaucratic, they are essential to our acting on our warmest sentiment too. Without them weaker isolated, alienated, disillusioned. We see that around us. This is the irony that we confront now in American Life. The failures of her institutions havecaes led us to demand that they be uprooted or demolished. But we cant address those failures without renewing and rebuilding those variousng institutions. We are right to w be fed up with them sometimes, but we need them to be respectable and legitimate. It is right that ants tie institutionalism should guide our reactions against the excessive institutional strength in American Life. But our problems today are much more like excesses of institutional weakness. So they require recommitment and reform rather than resentment. There is nothing weaker in american live now than the establishment. And i say week commitment and reform in this order because our attitude has to change first. This book does get into some structural and Institutional Reforms that could help some of the particular institutions i talk about, congress and political parties, t professions, the academy, civic and religious life. But the common denominator when iten comes to those types of reforms is at the people in those institutions have to happen. M to t and that means they have to first see that the ways they are now behaving our big part of the problem. And that by making key institutions impossible to trust we aren contributing to a profound andct destructive set of social dysfunctions in america. In one arena after another of our national life, we face the challenge of drawing alienated people back into our institutions. We can point to all kinds of complicated theories aboutpl how to build the trust its required to accomplish that. But the simplest way is to the people to inhabit our institutions to try to be more trustworthy and we can each work that. We can give our institutional responsibilities more of our time and effort people we can our identity and selfconsciousness. We can understand ourselves as defined by those institutions that matter most in our own lives. We can judge yourselves by their standards, hold ourselves up to their ideals and take seriously their forms of integrity. And we can work to reform them where they are failing and help them work better and be more worthy of trust and confidence. We can youre not for the formless economy and the independent contractor but for the rootedness and responsibility of the member and partner and the worker and the owner and this citizen. There is a word i think for attitudes like that word is devotion. What is required of us now is devotion to the work that we do together with other people in the service of a common aspiration. And therefore the devotion to the institution that we compose and inhabit. That kind devotion does call for sacrifice and commitment. It calls on each of us to tpledge ourselves to some institution we belong to unabashedly. To jump in sometimes. And that kind of devotion is not only necessary, its actually very attractive just now. We want objects of devotion, we want something to commit to bully often dont see that what we see is right within acour reach. Its easy to be fashionable rebels, its hard to remind ourselves why our core commitments are worthwhile. Tand thats the kind of case that institutionalism now involved in white so crucial. What im proposing here is a modest change in our stance towards our country and towards a social crisis that it confronts. Not a social resolution or political transformation, at least not directly. Just a greater awareness of how integrity and trust and confidence belonging in meeting are established in our lives and so a greater care about some habits that weve gotten into attempt to cut us off from them. These habits have left us feeling like theres no one we can trust except cynics and outsiders. And nothing we can do except register our outrage at people and ideas that we disagree with. Thats what the life of our society would look like without functional institutions. But the fact is that our society has many functional institutions, and it could have many more if we devote ourselves to strengthening and reforming those that we are part of. And if we respond to needs and problems by building and rebuilding institutions rather than expressing frustration from the outside. Thinking and speaking just a little differently about how we live together can make a bigger difference that we might imagine. It can help us see what weve been missing to do what weve been neglecting, disable weve only assumed or taken foror granted. Small steps like those are what make great changes possible. They are constructive comments of a build upon each other and turn us all into builders. That in the end is the character of the transformation that we need now. The demolition crews have been allowed for too long to define the spirit of this era in eAmerican Life. But where we are headed is going to be up to the builders and the rebuilders. He and that is what each of us should seek toho be. Thank you very much. [applause] ive given an overview of the book, im happy to take questions and dig in a little deeper. Theres a microphone appear. Hi that was a great talk. Thank you. Im curious to the extensive which you think this is specifically an american problem to look beyond the u. S. To countries where this is more or less a problem . What are the lessons we can learn from that . Think its certainly not a uniquely american problem. If you think about the picture of the crisis i start with, similar crises are certainly happening around the west. A politics of populism, breakdown of trust and confidence, trust in government in particular is actually lower in europe in the United States and it has been for long time. And thats really saying something, because confidence in government and United States is quite low. I do think there are some distinct ways that americans look through institutions and treat them as invisible. We identify off than to situate with unmediated directness in a different way than many other people. Our culture is rooted in a kind of protestantism that just doesnt trust mediating institutions, that once direct access. So weve always been attracted to outsidersan and ten mavericks. Our politics is not has always drawn that sort of figure. There was an exception to that in the middle of the 20 century in america coming out of the world war and the depression and decades mobilization with very unusual constant confidence in institution i think that was not the norm. That was an odd moment. It was an odd moment that was define our sense of default. So living now in america that has so little trust in institution, feels too much much more broken and, much more peculiar than it otherwise might. We still live with those norms that kind of baby boomers grew up with. Our leaders are still those baby boomers. We are really testing now, just how elderly our leaders can get. And it turns out pretty elderly. [laughter] i do think there is something distinct about this american approach that contributes to this problem. Understanding it should be part of thet solution. But the breakdown of social trust and the rise of populism is certainly not just anus american phenomenon. Think if your talk. Thanks. Weve watched two different versions of reality play out in our politics recently. Your points on institutional failures and the performative nature of some actors are very well taken. But i think you havent properly addressed another can shipping factor. Anbu opposition to both expertise and experts. This is a longstanding pattern for example the declining trust in major newspapers. I tell my students to read more than they watched. And to avoid news that is engineered to give them aiv dopamine hits of righteousness. But what would you do to address this problem . Youbl are right, your sins to have that advice. I think this is very much connected to what i get at here, and its very much part of the discussion of the book is the loss of trust and expertise. Thest question is why do we trust experts . I think that has a lot to do with why we trust institutions which is to say we trust them when we think they are formed in a way that gives them Greater Authority than the average person on some particular subject, right . So the Scientific Method gives scientists more authority because its clear that before they sayay something theyve gone through a process that helps them figure out whats likely to be trueem and what isnt. And we do trust that happens though even our trust in scientists has declined quite a lot in america in the last two decades. I think journalism, as i mentioned, stripes or Something Like that. To t show that it has a method that makes it worthy of our trust. I think expertise in general works that way, and that the transformation of a lot of the heprofessional institutions that form experts that way, into in some cases really stages for political performance. But in any case the sense that the public has that all of these institutions of authority no less than they say, has a lot to do with the publics lost of trust. It is connected to the populism in our politics is also driven by a set of technological advances that gives everybody the misimpression that they know as much as their doctor. Right . People show up with all the stuff in the internet. We all now, because the kind of fragmentation of t the media and of culture, we imagine that we have access to all the knowledge in the world, and therefore we dont need experts. But thats not actually what experts are. Experts. Dont just have knowledge, they have experience, they have a certain kind of prudence that is built from the practice of applying knowledge in the world. I think that is an idea our culture just doesnt want to hear. You see that in politics to its allure of the outsider. Politics requires knowledge and experience. You wouldnt think so now, right . When people run for office, they proclaim how little experience they have. They take pride in the fact that theyve never done this before. Well, im not sure thats a great way to prove that you could be president. So i think this pattern has a great deal to do with what i tried to get out which is the sense in which our idea that institutions exist to form people, to give them a certain kind of shape in the life of a society, as a way to make them trustworthy into make those individuals trustworthy. We still want expertise at some level, right . You dont want to hear from your surgeon that hes kind of average. Thats not great news. You want to hear it somebody who knows what theyre doing and can prove it. But in a lot of our public life, we dont really admit to ourselveses that, kind of expertise has value. Thats part of this cultural picture im trying to draw. Thanks, thanks very much for the presentation. I enjoyed it a lot. It certainly gave me a lot to think about. And youre just most recent comments there, i think have a lot to do with my question, it may be answering myot question. One of the things that you said was that you wanted to include the professions among institutions and your comments aboutnd doctors and medicine and so forth were along those lines. But im not clear about is whether it sounds like a loss of face in professions as institutions in your mind eschew people from the outside of those. But i wonder, i dont get the sense that from with inside the Scientific Community or inside the medical community or inside the Engineering Community for that matter, that there is a crisis of confidence in their own ninstitution. Well, i think its hard to sustain that confidence when the public doesnt trust you. And so i would actually say that a lot of what we think of as the core professions, there is a sense that the educational institutions and the institutions of practice that really give you a place in the profession have lost some of their authority, and people do look for shortcuts, look for ways to gain prominence, a public profile more than to work theirbl way through the kind of normal steps involved in gaining expertise. I dont think its collapsed and its different from one institution to another. Medicine, you actually have to know some particular things in order to practice medicine. You cant really just pretend to know them. But i do think that theres a way in which the larger societys loss of trust in this institutionshe is connected to a decline in confidence. And not just confidence, but satisfaction. People in our major. Special and now are much less happy with their professional lives. And you can see why, because at the larger public doesnt value you and the way it values your profession a generation ago, then it does become much harder to justify to yourself the kind of commitment necessary to become an expert enterprise in the field. You see it in some places more than others. Its not the same everywhere, but i think you seated legal world, you see it certainly in journalism which is a profession that is especially subject to pressures and forces. And i would argue to some extent and medicine two. American doctors are much less satisfied than they were even a generation ago to loan mid century america. Just with their place innt society. Okay thanks. I found myself agreeing with your analysis almost entirely. Thats great to hear thank you. And i would just like to push you more toward specific policies because my concern and i look at this politicsli and prose audience and see people from the American Enterprise institute and other thinkn tanks. Those who are so inclined and intentional will hear your message and maybe try, but for the mass majority of americans this is almost as speaking a foreign language. So just wondering what you think about policies such as rank a Choice Voting and universal basic income, and other reforms that are really designed to bring people together. I appreciate that, im not sure i agree that this doesnt speak to most peoples experience in some ways right . The sense that its harder now to find people to trust is a problem for everyone and not just for people in washington are people of a certain level of education. And so ways of trying to diagnose that in terms that relate to peoples experience could apply more than that but i do agree with you that its some levelve they also have to take the form of institutional reformists. In the institutions that are broken, congresses the broken institution in our politics at this point whatever think off donald trump and itr could spend an hour telling you what he think of donald trump i think the failure comes actually at a much bigger problem. In the various complaints we have about the other branches of government largely functions of various failures of the legislative failure to take its responsibilities seriously. And reforms of the congress that wouldy encourage its congress to think of themselves as insiders not outsiders and to think of themselves as legislators not performers, would have to look like change the budget process, the Committee System that invests people more in the actual work of the institution. I think weve gotten to an place now where most members really take one big vote a year on a big budget bill. They had nothing to do with creating, it was created in the leadership offices at midnight the night for the government shuts down. The structure of the work of congress has a lot to do with that. There Institutional Reforms that could change that. C i think in some ways its dangerous to say this on cspan, their ways transparencies gone too far in congress. There are no quiet spaces for members attack to each other. The only protected spaces are thedn leadership offices at midnight before the government shuts down. Those of the places were all the work gets done. Cspan is a godsend but there also has to be some places for members to bargain and deal with each other. There is no such thing as bargaining in public. If you see people bargaining in public you see a show attheyre not watching the real work of the legislature. And so i think congress has to be much more selfconscious about the way that it structures its work and that could be done. Members are very dissatisfied with the quality of life is pretty low, they could do something about it, they dont behave like they could but they could. So i think younger members in particular in congress in both parties now dont even know what they are not doing. They didnt see congress function, the last real bipartisan, big bipartisan bills i would say they happened in the early bush years. Which is a long time ago now. And congress hasnt really sort of felt itself functioning in quite a while. So use that as an example because thats an institution that really makes its own rules and could change them. And if it understood the problem in these terms, i think it would have some incentives to do that. So part of the reason to write a book like this is a try to surface thesevi problems in these terms because its not how wes tend to see you then. And it actually points in the opposite direction than how we can see you then. So the set of thinking when you tear them down, the establishment is too strong, we can understand lead to building things up. We need functional institutions and right now we n just dont have them. A hi, i have sort of two questions but i want to start by saying thank you for your presentation. I think youre making a wonderful contribution to the discussion and the issues. The first part, is since your firm what i gather for your presentation, is your asking for a new attitude and a change of mindset. What would it take for us to culturally for that to really get launched . In addition too, i mean, more than you just writing thisis great book and getting us all to read it, but what culture you should all read it or at least buy it. Absently on offer that the second part is actually the other end with reform part. What kind of structure it seems to me that part of the problem isnt, it has to do with how weve organize our society. And that we are organized, our institutions have been handed down to us from kind of a first agricultural, then industrial. Now we are in a digital age. And the structures, hierarchies that we created that worked then, dont work now. Andhe weve come in a sense, weve undermined how we used to be organized by the personal connections in community, the way the personal relationships. What kind of Structural Reforms can you think of that might help restore personal connections and things that restore a sense a kind of order so that organ nations are just different . These are Great Questions in the t sense that they are impossible questions in those the best questions. But i would say they are related, right . So if one thing you asked is how do we start to change attitude, i honestly think the only answer to that isr to articulate ourselves the problems inem a particular way that causes us to think about our everyday decisions little bit differently. I dont think we can really do much better than that. But that can be a veryan powerful way to change. I dont think this can be really a topdownan change. And, ultimately, the trouble with the need for institutional reform is that i has to come from within. The people who are now empowered by the way things work have to want them to change. And thatse very hard to get to, it has to be a demand for it so there has to be a sense that this is the kind of change of attitude we need. And we should each do what we can. If you. Can write a book, maybe he should write a book. But if you work in an institution that could stand this kind of change, i think it is important to speak up for it in these terms. And at the same time, when you ask what kind of reforms might be possible, i think the way you put it is valuable right . To say that its always American Life is changing dramatically over the years, and weve seen big changes in our culture, in our society before. Some of our institutions have proven very durable and those kinds of change and some have not. I think what is troubling at this moment is that we havent seen a response to the taken a form of a lot of new Institution Building. The goal of the argument im making is not to just restore and recover what we have, but blto respond to novel problems with new institutions. We think about the last time our country went through such a period of intense dynamic change was that the end of the h , beginning of the 20th century where with similar problems in some ways, dramatic economic change, growth in the scale and scope of the economy, massive waves of immigration, we responded to those with Institution Building, with a lot of Institution Buildingon ultimately but what we think of now, on the one hand is a Progressive Movement but you can think of it also is the emergence of a set of both bottomup and topdown institutions in American Society to deal with the really new problems. I think that spoke to a kind of tendency in American Life to respond to problems by building institutions, it is an americannd thing, alexis to telco was here and wrote a letter to his father and said if you get four americans together they will elect the treasurer. [laughter] that is one way to understand our national character, but i think weve lost a little bit of that tendency now, to see a problem and respond by organizing around it. Because we have all these ways now to just express our dissatisfaction, and we inclined to expressive forms of response rather than to structural, organizational forms. We think that by just signaling on facebook that we agree with that guy, we done something about the problem. For saying on facebook that youre on the right side of something, thats not doing anything at all. And very often its a way of avoiding doing something. In some ways its even worse than that because the kind the forms of reaction the twitter and other forms of social media encourage, lead us to respond to problems in a kind of confrontational way rather than thinking about how to build around them. So i would say apart of what we need is a recovery of a kind of Institution Building instincts. And again, the only contribution i can really make to that is to try to articulate that is a need to try to help people see that when they face a problem, maybe thats one way to think about it. Thank you for your talk. I have good news, given the context of this evening. I work at georgetown, i lead a Research Program on modernizing congress. Theres a whole committee that was created a year ago, this month, to update and modernized institutions. Its got six democrats and six republicans. It is run an egg gullet terry and participatory way. I go to all of the hearings, i work very closely with them. They all ask questions, they all contribute its what they call unified staff meeting the staff works together all the time. Just three weeks ago they introduced a bill that was based on a set of my think 29 recommendations of the last year that came out of committees. Thats legislation to reform the institution and it is huge because it takes into account Building Digital infrastructure, bringing back the deliberative process, all the things we hear about like you know, devolving power back out to the committees and allowing members more chances to lead in the process. I think, relating to the other comments this evening, congress is down to 30 to 50 of its hearings. We see this show pony hearings kelike benghazi and the impeachment. But its really not. Itit has stopped doing the deliberative process. Its now funding itself at 19 80s levels in house expertise. The thing that i really noticed a lot, and id love to hear your comments on this, is this a possibility, is a problem with data and digital its has a weaponize transparency. Every public place you can imagine has been a weaponize at this point. Our hearings if people want to watch them you can watch all of them. They are tremendous, and they bring lot ofri people working on this. Congress doesnt have ways to curates the incoming, we love cspan by the way but we need Something Like a cspan channel four which doesnt exist at this point. But it be far more curated, far more local and create a voice that talks to congress on his calendar. Its committees of jurisdictions, not all members can care about everything all the time. It seems there has to also be some kind of real fundamental coming to terms with the monetization of data. Its not serving deliberative democracy right now. That has to do with everything being in this sort of freemarket final and mentalist model. And unless we come too terms with unregulated capitalism as its going, thats another massive institutional set of changes that we need. Id love for you to talk with that because you are from aei. I have received a lot of your memos on the other side of the hill staff. Thank you for that and for the work youre doing. I have been involved in that committee to because theres kind of a twin committee of the American Political Science Association that is i have been a member of. I am a recovering Political Science myself. We have offered some recommendations to the House Reform Committee and they have taken those. I think the work they are doing is enormously important. At the core of it theres a question needs be asked to mourn its bliss it way there two answers in going opposite directions and we are going in both directions at this time we try to reform congress. Ron the one hand the purpose of congress is like the purpose of the European Parliament, which is to empower majorities while they are majorities until w the public takes away their power. On the other hand you could say the purpose of congress is to compel accommodation among different groups andcc factions in American Life. To force compromise. I think thats the original purpose of congress. I also think it is absolute essential and that the American National legislature is decidedly not a European Parliament. It is intended to force people with differences to come to some agreement. Congress has become very bad at this. Because implicitly at least, both parties wants it to function like a European Parliament so that when they have the majority they want to say now weve got it, we should do everything we want to do andth get whatever we can get pushed through through. The trouble is then you lose it and then the other party takes away everything you did and tries to do everything and move live now since the 1990s where we have not has stable Majority Party in congress. Which in itself is pretty and usual. So both parties they think next time we will win everything dont compromise aw just way to our peopleai get in and then we will be able to do everything we want. It never works that way. And congress basically always just sits around and waits for the next election will movee really will be able to do her work. I think accepting the fact that ultimately the people you dont like arent going away. Is the beginning of Civil Democratic politics. Csour politics now is premised on the idea that maybe next time the people we dont like well just go away. Thats how we approach every election cycle. And both parties do this. Its just bonkers. Its completely disconnected of white American Life looks like right now which is a very divided that needs help coming together. I think a set of congressional reforms that would try to address itself isl that need, would try to force a less majoritarian and more accommodative congress. I would not for example get rid of the filibuster. Id much of the have a filibuster in the house and get rid of the one of the isenate, because it really does force you to b have more and narrow majorities to get things done. I think those kindsfi of changes that break down the big two will win everything. Instead trying to create a Dynamic Coalition a change over time have been actual quite calm look at a political side of we live in, that might require some electoral reforms, certainly Structural Reforms of congress think the power is much too centralized in leadership now. All these things were done for reason, but we have to see at this moment that an institution not functioning as happened in the 1940s, as happened in the 1970s, congress is a take itself by the remake change. Those are basically only 12 people in the house who actually want to do anything right now. There may be ten senators between and the two parties who are really interested in structural reform. I think getting more of them interested is absolutely essential to anything happening that hopes to work out. Why think thats it, thank you very much. [applause] i want to thank you all for coming tonight especially yuval for being here. Youre going have a signing here at the table were going to have a signing right appear by the table and if yo and the books are available the registers. If you could fold up your chairs and leaned them against something solid though be fantastic thank you. This weekend on book tv africanamerican history the likelihood of secession and challenges for the working class. Today at 620 eastern kevin meridor, editorinchief of espns the undefeated on their latest book on africanamerican history. The fierce 44. We dont say this is the greatest black achievers ever, we dont try to put that these are just 44 that we looked at that have a sense of ability of the first africanamerican president in the sense they did something pioneering something disrupting, they were in some cases id say noisy geniuses are quiet innovators. 9 p. M. Eastern on after words, prettier prizewinning journalists pulitzer or prizewinning reporters and their book, tight rope. Theyre interviewed by oregon democratic senator jeff merkley. Especially in the small towns around america in the rural areas around america, people are walking on a tight rope. And one miss and they fall. Theres no safety net. Over the last 50 years, we have vastly overdone it. Weve become kind of obsessed with this personal responsibility narrative. Watch authors kevin merida, f. H. Buckley and others this weekend on booktv on cspan2. I think were ready. I think were ready to get started. Im so so excited. Thank you all for coming out today, and welcome toll