"A Time to Build" by Yuval Levin

Sydney M. Williams

Burrowing into Books

“A Time to Build,” Yuval Levin

March 15, 2020

“The family is our first and most important institution, not only from the perspective

of the history of humanity, but also (and more simply) in the life of every individual.”

                                                                                                            A Time to Build, 2020

                                                                                                            Yuval Levin (1977-)

Yuval Levin is the founder of “National Affairs,” a director of the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing editor of National Review. His belief is that we need to rebuild our institutions (“The durable forms of our common life”) – families, schools, universities, church, the military, civic organizations and legislatures – into the formative organizations they once were.”

The book (short at 204 pages) is divided into three parts – a description of the crisis, institutions in transition and a suggested path forward. “Everybody,” he writes in the introduction, “knows that Americans have long been losing faith in institutions.”  In losing faith, “…we have lost the words with which to speak about what we owe each other.” These institutions, which were once molds that formed who we were, have become platforms for those who use them for their own purposes. This is not the only problem confronting us, but it is the one, he writes, “…about which we tend to be most blind.”

Yuval Levin takes us through the political world where he claims problems are not so much ones of ideology, but of social psychology, “…unleashed and unmoored from institutional constraints.” Thirty pages of the book are devoted to campus culture where “…our degraded capacity for unity and solidarity is the result of a degraded capacity for accepting differences…The trouble is not that we have forgotten how to agree but that we have forgotten how to disagree.” Abetted by administrations and faculty inculcated with a culture of moral activism that does not allow for dissent, colleges graduate students endowed with a sense of political correctness that was “...utterly unfamiliar in the world of work until the last few years.” Writing of the effect of social media, Mr. Levin notes: “In some important respects, this has been an age of isolation not despite but because of social media.” Social media affirms us, rather than shape us. Shopping on-line is convenient, but is there the same sense of loyalty one has to real stores and the people who work in them?

Of all our institutions, family is most important: “Family is the most primordial, and therefore the most foundational of the institutions that form society…It forms us by constraining us – moving us to ask: ‘As a parent, as a spouse ,is this what I should be doing.’” Yet, we are living through a collapse of traditional family forms. Marriage rates have fallen, People marry later and have fewer children. Forty percent of American children are born into one-parent households. “A diminished sense of the family as a formative and authoritative institution leaves us less prepared to approach other institutions with a disposition to be formed by them.” Because this definition of family does not include all forms – single parenthood, cohabitation, same-sex marriage, etc. – it suggests today’s popular culture prefers individual choice (inclusion) over form, its ability to be formative. Family, today, becomes a “…kind of platform, a way of being recognized.”

“The rise of megastar pastors,” Mr. Levin writes in a section on religion in America, “has raised the prospect of a genuine celebrity culture within American Christianity.”  There is a downside. He quotes Christian author and journalist Andrew Couch about a fading sense of responsibility that traditional pastors once had to their flocks, and the loss of institutional structure that tended to protect congregants against abuses of power.

Mr. Levin believes that the renewal of institutions is critical to our moral health as a society, and it is hard to disagree: “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 legitimize authority.”

He writes of how we transitioned from a WASP system of elites, who had closed their institutional doors to women and religious, racial and ethnic minorities, to a meritocratic system of elites. But, because this new elite “…does not think of itself as an aristocracy, it does not perceive itself to be in need of restraints.” In contrast, while WASPs were wrong to be exclusive, “…they were not wrong to impose a demanding code of conduct on those within their institutions.” 

Yuval Levin concludes his book with a modest request of the reader: “…act through institutions a bit more, not just atop or against or around them. And, in acting through them, to strengthen and reform them: not just to trust our institutions but to make them more trustworthy.” Doing so will allow “…a greater awareness of how integrity, trust, confidence, belonging and meaning are established in our lives.”

Mr. Levin’s call for rebuilding is devoutly to be wished. Can or will it happen? My heart wants to believe in the future he sees as possible, but my head has doubts. I pick up the paper, turn on the news and am overwhelmed with hashtags, political correctness and identity politics – of the cynicism embedded in most of today’s trend-setters. On Saturday I read an op-ed by Barton Swaim in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. The story was about Alma Deutscher, a fifteen-year old prodigy who writes and plays classical music. “I’ve always wanted to write beautiful music, music that comes out of the heart and speaks directly to the heart.” Yet, critics claim her music is unacceptable because it does not reflect the ugliness of the world in which we live. What a sad commentary on Western culture. The infestation of hatred toward our past, toward Western giants in art, history and literature has gone on so long and has dug so deep that I fear a way forward may prove more difficult than the remedies proposed by Mr. Levin. This is an important book. Yuval Levin has broached an important subject. I hope I am wrong.