Episode 73 – Formative Institutions with Yuval Levin

Among the legions of intellectuals and academics milling about Washington D.C., few commands more respect than Yuval Levin.  Yuval has worked in the nation’s capital for decades and has a surprisingly hopeful message for the prospects of conservatism’s future and the fate of the republic.  Yet he is soberminded about the challenges we face, chiefly the failure of our institutions to form us into the kind of people fit to live in a society of ordered liberty.

 

Yuval joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to discuss why are institutions are important, why they’re failing us, and what we can do about it.  They also discuss the intellectual roots of the modern Left and Right and what Edmund Burke contributed to modern political thought.

 

Yuval Levin is a political analyst, public intellectual, academic, and journalist.  He is the founding editor of National Affairs, director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a contributing editor of National Review, and co-founder and a senior editor of The New Atlantis.  He also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy.

 

Yuval served as a member of the White House domestic policy staff under President George W. Bush.  He was also executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics and a congressional staffer at the member, committee, and leadership levels.

 

Yuval’s essays and articles have appeared in numerous publications, among them, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary.  He is the author of five books, two of which are discussed in detail in the episode: A Time to Build and The Great Debate.