Yuval Levin: Why America Stopped Trusting

Yuval Levin: The question for us is how do we look forward? How do we build from where we are? Rather than imagining that we would want to go back to mid century America,

Host: We sit at the intersection of markets, policy in the real economy, trying to understand not just where things are, but where they're going. Uvald Levin has spent years thinking about institutions, what they're supposed to do, and what happens when they stop doing it. What I want to understand today is what's really broken, what's reversible, and what that means for how we live and work going forward. Yuval Levin, welcome to the Puck.

Yuval Levin: Thanks very much for having me.

Host: So for our listeners, if you had to distill your work into one idea, what's the single most important thing people might misunderstand about institutions today? And why does that misunderstanding matter right now?

Yuval Levin: You know, I think at the core of my way of thinking about this question is the simple premise that institutions form people. That ultimately who we are and what we are is a function of the ways in which we interact with other people, the habits we form, the attitudes we develop, and that those are very often structured by our institutional relationships, our family, our community, our work, our school, our ways of answering for us the question who am I and what role do I have? And the ways in which we answer that question ultimately determine how we make decisions in our lives. And so I think ethics begins not with the question what choice should I make in this situation, but what kind of person do I want to be and how would that kind of person act in this situation?

Host: When you're looking at the world in which we live in and the polarization we're experiencing, is there any, for instance, difference between the left and the right in terms of how they get this wrong at this point?

Yuval Levin: Yeah, I mean, I think broadly speaking, you know, left and right are very general terms, and as applied to individual people, they're almost always not quite correct. But there is, I think, a useful general distinction which is that the, the, the, the right, broadly speaking, tends to begin from the premise that we are born, fallen unready, to be free, needing to be formed first, and therefore that the institutions of our society are necessary for us to be free. They form us, uh, before we can really be responsible and the danger, the risk we face is the dissolution of those institutions or the corruption of them. The left, broadly speaking, tends to begin from the premise that we're born free and ready to be free, and that the institutions of our society too often threaten our freedom by serving other people, serving wealthy people, serving Powerful people, and that what we need from our politics is to be liberated from those institutions to the extent possible, so that we can be free. The right tends to think that what we need from politics is the preservation of those foundational institutions, again, family and community and religion and education and work. And so those are very different attitudes about our institutions. Now. They're not as totally opposite as that description suggests, because everyone is some combination of these views. We all understand that institutions are necessary, but also dangerous. We all understand that people, uh, need to be formed, but also need to be given room. And so we're a mix of these things. But I think people do start out inclining in one direction or another, and that does shape our attitudes about society's institutions in some pretty different ways.

Host: Okay, uh, and when you're talking about this issue of forming people, you talk about institutions forming people and, you know, forming people to begin platforms. And then there's this issue of performance. And what does this actually look like in real life? I mean, inside a company, a governmental agency, or even a media organization?

Yuval Levin: Well, you know, the function of an institution is really to facilitate common action and to overcome various obstacles to collective action. And so an institution is a bunch of people, but it's a bunch of people who are organized around a purpose that they share in common. And the institution gives each of them a role in relation to that purpose. Maybe one of them owns the company, the other helps to manage it. Another works for it, has this job or that job or that job. Uh, think about a school. Maybe you're a teacher. Maybe another person is a principal, another is a parent, another is a student. Together they're engaged in common work, and they each have a role. And those roles shape those people, constrain them, but also empower them. Oftentimes what we find happening in our institutions now in 21st century America is that a lot of, uh, us resist the roles that the institutions were part of, would assign to us. And instead we look to use those institutions as platforms for performance, platforms for ourselves to elevate ourselves, to build a following, to build our brand. Obviously, this mostly happens or especially happens with people in positions of leadership or, uh, authority in institutions so that you run for Congress. And instead of allowing the institution to shape you into a legislator, you use it as a platform for yourself to become a more prominent media personality. That's a very common practice now in our politics. It also happens in corporate America where people should be leading companies, see those companies as ways of elevating their own personal brand. And so come to have a sense that what the entire institution is for is to help them build a personal following. But, you know, you see it throughout the core institutions of our society now in the academy, in science, in the professions, over and over, you find people who should be shaped by institutions, instead using those as platforms to participate in the culture war or in some big national debate. And the trouble is that when you do that, the institution you're part of becomes harder for other people to trust. And a lot of the decline and trust that we see in institutions now is a function of a sense that the people in them are not really playing the roles assigned to them. They're using those institutions to elevate themselves. And as a result, it's harder to trust professionals. It's harder to trust corporations. It's harder to trust our politicians now. Uh, it's always hard, right? We've never been a, uh, trusting people. Americans. We don't trust Congress, and we're never going to. But there's a difference between having a sense that the people in the institution are simply not doing the work that that institution assigns them and a sense that maybe they're not good enough at it, or maybe their interests are not my interest. I think we're seeing a distinct form of untrustworthiness now that has become a real social problem in American life.

Host: When you frame it like that, what comes to mind for me is the news. And I think about a time when we had the Fairness Doctrine. I think about where Walter Cronkite would come on and we would literally only have three choices between ABC, NBC and CBS. And, you know, you'd get 20 minutes of news and only two minutes of national politics. When you tune in in the New York Times now or Fox News, the audiences have this built in economic bias. I mean, they want their news to come to them in a way that is palatable. And there's a real economic challenge to these institutions, isn't there? Because people will cancel you if you're not telling them what they want to hear.

Yuval Levin: I think it's absolutely right, and it points to the ways in which this transformation of institutional roles has happened. In journalism in particular, ah, there's a kind of sociological explanation of what you describe, and an economic one. And they're closely related to the prior age that you described. The age of a small number of options that were highly trusted had its own problems. Those small number of options were a small number of options, and they represented a narrow segment of opinion. And the three networks basically all gave you the same picture. And it wasn't always right. So we've gained a lot by the democratization of journalism and by the explosion of sources of information thanks to the Internet. But that period in which that kind of model prevailed, the period, I would say, of the half century or so after the end of the Second World War, was, uh, a distinct and different period in American life. It was characterized by an extraordinarily cohesive mainstream consensus in American culture. America came out of the Second World War with extraordinary confidence in its institutions and its leaders. I would say, from our perspective, vastly excessive confidence. We had much too much trust that the people up there knew what they were doing. There were benefits to this. It did create real social cohesion. Our country did extraordinary things. And the President said, go to the moon. And we did. But there were also great costs to this. And among those was a kind of disillusionment that we are still living with and processing a sense that those people we trusted weren't trustworthy. And the beginnings of a collapse of confidence in American institutions and elites that starts really in the early 1970s. And that in a lot of ways accelerated in the 21st century and continues to build. There were excesses in those years, and there were reasons to liberalize, to break down the hold of that elite consensus and to give ourselves more options. We're now living with the excesses of the other side. The loss of trust, the loss of a cohesive, self confident American consensus. You can go too far in either direction. And so it makes sense now to ask ourselves how we can recover some sense of cohesion, some idea of unity. Not because the 1950s and early 60s were perfect. They had a lot of problems. I would much rather live now than then, but because the challenges we face now are real, and so we have to address them too. The other point I'd make about journalism in particular, though, is that the cohesive consensus of that period created a particular model of journalism, an economic model that meant that the way to make money in journalism was to have the broadest possible audience. Right? It was mass media. And what you offer advertisers was a very, very large audience, and they were willing to pay a lot for that. What the Internet and technology in general has enabled in the 21st century is an audience that is targeted. It's smaller, but it's the right people. It's exactly the people who might want to buy your product. And that the ability to offer advertisers that kind of narrow audience means that you have to keep that audience and you have to make sure that those people are focused on your product. They have to come back to the New York Times every day, maybe several times a day. You don't do that in the way in which you held a broad audience. A broad audience wants broadly appealing news and information broadly useful, something anybody could use, whoever they are, so that you get so many people in that maybe some of them will want to buy a Ford truck. Right. But if you know exactly who your audience is, you've got to keep them coming back. And that kind of intensity is achieved by getting people angry and is achieved by. By focusing on people's particular interests. So the New York Times used to benefit from being kind of generic for having this sort of general voice that could speak to everybody. It now benefits by being partisan and by making sure that its readers think the stakes are high. The world is on edge. And if you don't read the New York Times, you're not in on it. That's a very different model of journalism than they used to have. And the economic reasons for that are very strong. They're not stupid for doing this. But it does mean that the effect it has on our political culture is dramatically different than it used to be. The New York Times was always left of center, but it is now a voice of the partisan left in a way that is genuinely different than it was in, say, 1990.

Host: I love the way you framed it, which is, again, that there was good back in the 50s and 60s and 70s, but there was bad, had, and that again, the pendulum now has swung. There's a lot of really exciting things going on with the variety and the. The different sources that you can go to. But there is something to be said. I believe that knowing that we have a certain American culture and that there is a certain shared narrative in terms of, you know, where the world is going or what I would say, where the puck is going. How do we address that and move the pendulum back so that we start to get the best of both worlds?

Yuval Levin: I think that's the question. And to my mind, we have to start by seeing that that doesn't mean going back. There's a very, very heavy cloud of nostalgia over American politics in the 21st century. And it's nostalgia for a particular moment, for the end of the 50s and the beginning of the 60s. A lot of people on the right wish that they could live in the culture of that period. More people got married, people had more kids, more people went to church. Families were stronger. A lot of people on the left wished that they could live in the economy of that period, where unions were very strong, there was much more widespread prosperity. Inequality was lower. All of that is true. But we failed to see that there was also much less diversity in that period. Far fewer options. You really wouldn't want to live in that time, especially if you're in some way at the margins of society or in a minority. But even if you're not, American life has gotten a lot better in ways that we don't credit enough. But there's a reason why we're so nostalgic, and that is that the generation that was young in its heyday, in that period, has dominated American life for a very long time. Let me give you an amazing fact. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump were all born within six weeks of each other in the summer of 1946. Bill Clinton became our president in 1992 and Donald Trump in 2016, and he's president now. That's a very, very long stretch of time. And these people came from the same instant, and they were formed by that same life cycle in which the time to look back to is roughly the early 1960s. That's the America that they see as America for one reason or another, for all of them. And when you see that and you look at our politics, uh, with a broad lens, you realize nostalgia for that moment is incredibly widespread. And some of it even reaches into the younger generations who never experienced that moment, but still somehow think that's what American life really ought to be. Well, the fact is, America in 1960 was very, very unusual. It was still the country coming out of the Second World War. It had a dominant place in the global economy that it could not possibly have now, not because of some failure of ours, but because Europe and Asia recovered from World War II. It was a country with very little cultural diversity because of a long stretch of very strict constraints on immigration. The 1970 census had the lowest proportion of people born abroad in the United States in the entire history of our country. And it was a society that was liberalizing out of a, uh, long stretch of national mobilization, and it couldn't possibly be sustained. That liberalization happened for good and bad, culturally and economically. We have a lot more options now, a lot more dynamism, but a lot less cohesion and unity. And the question for us is, how do we look forward? How do we, how do we build from where we are, rather than imagining that we would want to go back to mid century America? And to my mind, that's going to require, first of all, some degree of generational transition in our politics. Uh, our next president really shouldn't turn 80 in office. That's just not a great thing. And that's happening now. And it was true of the last president. They both turned 80 in office. Let's not do that again. I love 80 year olds, but our leaders should really be younger than that, closer to the median age of the population. And I think we have to ask ourselves, what does our country need now that it doesn't have? To my mind, that's a crucial political question, not what do we have too much of that we need to get rid of? Sometimes that matters too. But what do we need that we don't have? And when we start thinking in that way, we can see our way out of the rut that our politics has been in, in the 21st century. It's not an easy question. Don't get me wrong. I don't think there's a simple formula. If I did, maybe I'd run for office, but I don't. Uh, nonetheless, I think looking forward and not backward is crucial. And our politics has not done that in a while. If you listen to the tone of an American election now, not a lot of it is about what are we going to need in 20 years. Much more of it is if that guy wins, then the country's over. And that's just not true. We, in a sense, the challenge is harder than that. It's what do we need to have a flourishing future?

Host: Uh, I could not agree more with how you just framed that. So let's go back to earlier when we talked about the news back in the 60s and 70s and the fact that advertisers were inclined to try to reach both the left and the right, they, they wanted the show to not be too controversial because they wanted everyone brought in. When you look at the algorithms now, and you look like you go back and you studying, uh, advertising, you know, advertising is designed to make you dissatisfied so that you buy a product. We've got the same situation with news right now where the advertisers are not wanting you to get a general consensus, um, message. They're trying to make you angry and afraid. Is, is part of the answer.

Yuval Levin: I guess I would say I'm skeptical that we could get that kind of regulation right. We have to ask ourselves not only what would it be useful to do, but what could we in fact also do. And those are not always the same thing. If we could do it perfectly, maybe I could be persuaded. But I think that the challenge is really more like finding an economic model for journalism that is sustainable, first of all, because the current model does not seem to be sustainable. And there's no journalistic outfit that feels economically comfortable right now that focuses on political journalism. There's no economic model for local news. Local news is extremely important for American political life, but no one has figured out how to do it in an economically sustainable way. And the model for national news, as you say, is very fragmented and very challenging. There's not a lot of room in that environment. The New York Times is doing pretty well financially. The Wall Street Journal is too. That's about it. And that's not really a sustainable news environment for a democracy. And so I think the question is, how do you find and build and sustain consumer interest in a more broadly appealing political journalism there? There's a vast underserved body of consumers out there who would kind of like to know what's going on in the world rather than just watch a panel of people make each other more and more and more angry. Right? But those people are not being served because it's not obvious how to monetize that. I think there's an opportunity there. And again, if I had the answer, I'd be doing it. But I think there's an opportunity there because when you find a massive underserved segment of the market, you should think, well, how do I serve them? How do I become the place they go? I think that's a challenge for political journalism going forward. There are people experimenting and trying, but I haven't yet seen that model emerge. I think that's what it looks like. I'm not sure we can regulate our way to a, uh, functional news environment around American politics.

Host: But let's stay with that. Let's assume, as you say, that the regulation's not the answer. And you talk about formation as a people. We have to take control of our lives. Then we have to demand or we have to reinforce those institutions that do give us balance news. And how do we do a better job of educating people and getting them to the point where they will do the critical thinking and the work so that they do make the economic model better? I mean, look, that's what we're struggling with, with the puck. I mean, I am trying to. To give a balanced approach on these issues as opposed to making it partisan. But the question is, can you develop an audience like a Joe Rogan when you aren't being outrageous?

Yuval Levin: Yeah, look, I think that is the question. And in a sense, it's always the challenge in a democratic society. There's a way that, uh, uh, a democratic republic requires a kind of person that it doesn't naturally produce. It requires an informed citizen who is willing to take responsibility for the common fate of the society and see that he or she has a part to play. And yet the way of life of a free society encourages in us a kind of consumerist passivity that says other people will take care of that. I just want to do what I want to do. And I'm going to narrow my world and my sense of responsibility so that I focus on what I want and what my family wants and needs. How we get to a place where we can form the kind of person we need is really the question for our kind of society. And the answer has to involve some combination of civic formation, civic education. It has to be self conscious and a set of incentives that drives people to take real ownership and responsibility. Achieving that we, that sense that when we think about our country, we think about ourselves as owning it is the question. And for me it's really at the center of my work for a reason that's sort of oddly personal. I want to tell you a quick story. I'm an immigrant to the United States. I was born in Israel. I came here as a kid. I was eight years old, so I grew up here. But I became an American citizen when I was 19 and I took the oath at the federal courthouse in Newark, New Jersey. And this elderly judge who retired judge I guess, who gave us the oath after we all swore and became Americans, he got up to give a little talk. And I thought he was going to talk about Abraham Lincoln or the Founding or something. And he said this very strange thing that's always stayed with me. He said, from now on you have to think, think and talk about America in the first person plural. And ah, I will admit to you that I just did not know what that meant. And I wasn't alone. And he could tell. And he explained it. He said, you have to think and talk about America in terms of us and we. And don't say they when you mean the United States. This is an important thing to say to immigrants, right? Because you grow up with a big they when you're a kid who's an immigrant. There's this, this whole thing in this country that you showed up in. And it's very important to think about we. But I actually think that's very important for all of us, for every American to remember that when we talk about our country, we have to say we and not they. And we is actually, uh, an oddly important word in the American political tradition. It's the first word of the Constitution. We, the people of the United States. It's the first word of that magical second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self evident. It's not a coincidence the hard work of citizenship is the work of taking ownership of the future together. And so it's not a coincidence that that's the question we arrive at, that it's hard for us to see how we get people to take this seriously. But I think it takes a combination of responsibility and talent. And what I mean by talent is you got to make it interesting. You have to make it appealing, engaging, give people a reason, um, to seek out, say, responsible news coverage that helps you understand why those people on the other side think the way they do. It's not easy to do. It doesn't come naturally to any of us. But that's the work of being a citizen. And so one way or another, we gotta help one another do it.

Host: Again, I couldn't agree with you more. The interesting thing is, as a country of immigrants, when you look at the history of companies and first generation family businesses and then second generation and third generation, it gets harder to get people to really be invested in the culture and the system. And the irony right now is we are cutting back on immigration, for instance. There's an energy and a certain desire, uh, and a gratitude that people that came here have that first and second generation that we start to lose as we become quote, unquote, more like trust fund baby, so to speak. And I was listening to something ironically that Reagan did. It came up on my TikTok feed a while ago where he was talking about that, you know, again, we are like the, the, the most dirty shirt until you look at the alternatives and that, you know, look at the number of immigrants in China. Look, look at the, the diversity that we have in this country. And we are so quick to criticize ourselves and shame ourselves. And yet where would most of us rather live?

Yuval Levin: Yeah, I think it's very important to see. I mean, uh, you know, in a way, what you get at when you talk about those third generation family business owners is the risk is taking it for granted. Right. It's just assuming. Well, this is here. And so the question for me is, how do I stand on this and get somewhere else? Well, the actual question is, how do I sustain this, first of all? And I think understanding the character of our country in that way is a very important place to start. And it's true you know, people, we should. We should take it as a compliment that so many people want to cross the border now. We should control the border. It's not something that we should just that. That we can be callous and cavalier about. But the fact that a lot of people see this country as a place that they could build a better life in should say something to us. And it should force us to ask ourselves, how do we sustain that? Because we get to be here. This is a great privilege. And, you know, a privilege is not something that you can just assume will always be there for your children and grandchildren. You have to think about how to sustain it for them and how to sustain it for yourself. The action of serious citizenship has to start. It's not easy, I mean, to help people who are in a position to take America for granted see instead how appreciative they should be of the inheritance they got. Takes education and formation. And it takes a culture that's proud of the country we have, rather than a culture that somehow feels like, uh, it's something to be ashamed of.

Host: And again, going back to where you get your news is the glass half empty, half full. I mean, so people have to really understand, kind of move away from that black and white way of seeing the world and start to focus more on nuance.

Yuval Levin: Yeah. And there's this attitude we have that this is the worst time, that it's just never been this bad. And it used to be great. It used to be easy, you know, to. To, uh, buy a house and one income. And my grandfather had it easy. No, talk to your grandfather. He did not have it easy. There are a lot of ways in which our situation is easier than theirs. There are some challenges we have that they didn't have. That's true. But what's distinct about this moment is not that it is harder than ever. What's distinct about this moment is that we are the ones who have to live in it. And so the obligation which is difficult for every generation is now on us. Our grandchildren are going to look at this period and think it was easy for us, too, because we got through it and they get to inherit it. It's not easy. And it was never easy. And it's never going to be easy. So don't wait for it to be easy. Just get to work.

Host: Yeah. And I sometimes say to people, if I had a time machine, okay, you want to go back to the 1960s. You want to go back to the 1860s? Like, when do you think it was better? Because, you know, our middle Class lived better than kings and queens did. So I couldn't agree with you more. And it is a matter of perspective and. And not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. So.

Yuval Levin: Yeah, and you know it. That doesn't mean things are easy. That doesn't mean our problems aren't real. They're very real, but problems are always real. And you know, that's that. That we shouldn't begin by assuming that somehow life is unfair to us. Uh, that's not true. We get to be Americans in the 21st century.

Host: Absolutely. So let's shift a little, because one of the areas that I know more about is the financial institutions. I was an SEC lawyer for many years. I watched a lot of the regulations change when Glass Steagall went away. I've really seen an erosion of a fear of the irs, uh, a respect for the sec. We're seeing the Federal Reserve challenge right now. So when you look at our financial system, for instance, and something that's very timely right now is even this notion of these non banks, this private credit, which kind of fall outside of the realm of regulation. When you're looking at this right now, do you see something, you know, new being built? What. What is it that we should be looking at in terms of our institutions right now?

Yuval Levin: Well, look, I think in a way, this begins from where we just were, which is it's important not to take stability and security for granted. And the financial history of our country, in a way, is a story of gradually coming to take stability for granted, making big mistakes as a result, taking very dangerous risks, then paying the price and recognizing that we have to build structures to avoid these risks and not taking it for granted. And then the next generation, or the one after, again takes it for granted. I do have a feeling that we are doing that now. I think that although there are a lot of lessons we learned and even more that we should have learned from the last great financial crisis in 2008, we are again allowing various kinds of highly unusual and peculiar forms of credit to emerge. Um, we are again losing our healthy fear of excessive risk and extreme risk. And we're doing things. Uh, it's a funny thing. You can read about the 19th century sometimes and think, how did they do this to themselves? How could they not have seen that this was headed toward a disaster? And I think I now understand. You do it day by day. You do a choice by choice, risk by risk. It works out. It's okay. You take another step, and pretty soon you look behind you and realize, whoa, I am Way, way beyond the guardrails. And so I do worry that we have. We've lost a sense of worry about risk. We've lost the sense that we need a set of institutions to facilitate a healthy capitalist economy. I think we're asking the Fed to do way too much, much, much more than its core monetary work, and that as a result, we're putting it in a place where it's likely to fail and put our economy at risk in dangerous ways. And so, again, I think it's a matter of not taking safety for granted and recognizing that we need to take these kinds of steps carefully. Um, technology is offering us some tremendous opportunities for growth and investment, but we have to see that human nature has not changed. The basic realities of the dangers that inevitably accompany a capitalist economy have not changed. And so we still need to worry about the basics. Risk should worry us, and we need some guardrails. Uh, I know a lot less about this than you, but I just have a sense that we are walking on a tightrope and we don't even realize it.

Host: Yeah, I have very strong feelings about this and what I would say. And I don't know how this ties back to the change with social media news, for instance, what came first, the chicken or the egg? Was it the fact that we created the Internet and that that allowed for all these different sources of news as opposed to some kind of nefarious scheme? What I think happened in the financial world, and I candidly think it's too late to go back now, meaning we're going to have a shellacking and then we're going to have to deconstruct it. But what I think happened was when Ben Bernanke, going back to 2010, realized that the Congress was not going to respond with a bunch of fiscal stimulus, that the Federal Reserve saw an opportunity to take interest rates down to zero. And in a growing world economy where China and other economies were essentially able to buy our T bills and then take that money and reinvest in our economy, we took the cost of money down to zero. When you take the cost of money down to zero, it makes it very easy for people to borrow money. Well, when institutions borrow money, they then have to lend it out. And 10 years ago, I asked a woman m named Jennifer Bello, who was a lawyer at Gibson Dunn, you know, kind of what was the beginning of the end. And she said when lenders took out covenants in their loan agreements, and it wasn't done nefariously, it was that there was a competition to Lend money. And so when you have too much supply, right, and um, you want to get demand to go up, you get rid of those, as you said, guardrails. Because the goal is to keep this economy going, we have to lend money. Now the issue is we've got trillions of dollars of money that was lent with no covenants, with improper in terms of collateral, not enough collateral. And that money has to work its way through the system. And what we're seeing now with BlackRock and Blue Owl and these other funds, people are demanding their money back because it's starting to leak out that what I'm saying is true. And as a result, there's going to ultimately have to be a sale of a lot of these underlying assets, which is going to cause a crash in those values. And so where this ends, I don't know, but I think it's going to be bumpy for a while.

Yuval Levin: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I think that makes a lot of sense. And, you know, the challenge is that getting through those kinds of, of corrections, as we coldly refer to them, requires, uh, political leadership and requires some confidence in political leadership. And, you know, the trouble is we have very little of that now. And so we've got to really think about how to prepare for the consequences of decisions we've been making over now a period of a decade and a half and more.

Host: So we gotta build back trust one way or the other. And when you look at polarization, I mean, one of the issues we talked about is AI for instance. But when you look at this institutional failure, what prevented it? What used to absorb some of this conflict that no longer exists today, and what can we do to replace it?

Yuval Levin: So one thing to say is there's never been a golden age on this front. It's always hard. And American trust in public institutions has never been that high. It has been higher than this. And I would say one way in which our institutions have approached the public differently has to do with the roots and sources of trust. I think confidence in institutions and leaders is a function of two things. One is demonstrated competence, a sense that these people can do their jobs. And the other is demonstrated restraint, a sense that there are things they won't do. I think American elites today, people who run our institutions, tend to think that the confidence problem they have is a competence problem, that people don't think they're good at their job. But I think it's actually much more commonly a restraint problem. It's that people think that these people will do anything for their own interests and there's nothing they won't do. And so when people don't trust the police, it's not because they think they can't do their job. It's because they think there's no limit to what they're going to do. When people don't trust public health authorities after Covid, a lot of it has to do with the sense that it seems like these people are just in it for their own political interest and they're not really being professionals. I think learning how to say, I don't know, I'm not sure learning how to say this is outside of my expertise, that's not what I do, is enormously important. If you think about the way in which, for example, science builds public trust, a lot of it is actually about demonstrating the limits of your own knowledge. Scientists love to say, I only know this much. This is all we can prove. And they love to say that because that's where the public's trust in them comes from. I think a lot more professionals need to recognize that saying, this is what I know, and I'm really good at it, and the rest of it, I don't know, um, actually makes you more trustworthy. Saying, there are limits to what I can do. A president saying, I can do this, but I can't do that. I need Congress for that. That would help. That would help people trust that person. Our presidents don't say that anymore. They don't say it because they think it makes them seem weak. Um, and they think seeming strong is the same thing as being strong. But the fact is, public confidence would actually benefit from a sense that people with power know the limits of what they can do and what they ought to do. And learning to express that kind of restraint, learning to say, look, we're just a corporation. We don't have an opinion about abortion. We don't need to. I don't have a view about election law. You know, I run a shoe company. Uh, being able to say that to the public would help build a lot more trust in our public life. Whereas when everybody feels like they have to do everything and when every company has to be in politics and when every profession has to be involved in every public debate, it really does become hard to trust people. And you really do feel like everything is partisanship. Everything is, are you team A or team B? And it's just hard to live in a free society that way, because we're always going to disagree about some things. But you still have to be able to trust your doctor and to trust a lawyer. To trust a bank that just can't be dependent, uh, on politics.

Host: I was going to ask you if religion, for instance, historically was the primary institution that shaped moral frameworks, what was going to replace it? Uh, but I actually want to reframe it a little, because as you were talking, I was thinking about this values and character matter. And at the end of the day, there's a statement that you get the politicians you deserve. And we talk about politicians look to the next election, and states, people look to the future generations. But at the end of the day, I wrestle with this as a parent and as a leader in my own life, which is we as a society have to wrestle with and have an issue where telling the truth matters. You know, I remember as a child, George Washington said, I cannot tell a lie. I cut down the cherry tree. I mean, that is the story of, uh, my parents told me as a little boy. You know, I wasn't a big fan of religion growing up. I've actually become much more religious as I've gotten older because I don't see it as black and white. I see it as like, it's the worst thing in the world till you look at the alternatives. But how do we in America have a more meaningful discussion about humanism and the great religions, Judeo Christian values? How do we bring back that discussion of values? Because I think it matters if we're going to develop trust in these institutions, since these institutions are ultimately made up of people.

Yuval Levin: I think religion certainly has an important role to play there. And. And in a sense, it always will. It's an. It's. It's an essential formative institution in our. In our culture. But it's not the only one. And what it means to think in terms of formative institutions is to help people understand that we each have a set of roles to play that require something of us. And so to say, let me put it this way. If I'm driving on the highway and somebody cuts me off and I want to yell out what I think of them, but I think to myself, well, the kids are sitting in the back. I'm just not going to do that. That's a way of being formed by an institutional role. It says, I'm their father, and their father is not the guy who loses his temper on the highway. That's a way that you are made better by an institutional role. And if you think about it, this happens to us a thousand times a day in all of the healthy institutions that we're part of. You think, well, I'm the boss, I'm in charge here. I'm just not going to behave that way. Or I work here. And so I have to represent this place. And that means I need to behave this way, not that way. That kind of, uh, formative institutional role is enormously important for that kind of civilizing function that you're talking about. It forces us to ask a question that is essential to being a good person. The question is, given my role here, how should I behave? Not just what do I want? Not just what do I need? Not just how do I want to look to these people, but given the role that I have as a parent, as a neighbor, as a Christian or a Jew, as an employer or an employee, as a teacher or a student. Given that, what's required of me. I think getting to a place in life when you can ask that question and take it seriously is one way to allow yourself to be formed by these institutions. And it's not just religion. Religion does play an important role in that way, and it gives you a. An elevated reason to believe that this is required of you. But I think we see that with any institution that we take seriously. We care about our family, and that means that we take seriously the role we have in relation to members of our family. We care about our country, we care about the place we work, we care about things we build and are part of together. And we end up saying, given the obligations I have to the people here, given the role I have, how should I behave? I think putting ourselves in a place to be formed that way is truly essential. And that's what in a free society where nobody's going to tell you what to do. And so you have to choose to do the right thing. That kind of institutional role is absolutely essential. And we all have them in some set of institutions, whatever they are. Maybe your family isn't the place. Maybe your family is broken and doesn't work for you that way. There's something. There's something where when you speak about it, you say we, right? Maybe it's a team, maybe it's a job, maybe it's an organization you're part of. But whatever that is, you have to let it form you in the direction of being a responsible person.

Host: And that makes sense. And that forces me to kind of think through like three things you said. One, this notion of we and do we identify as ourselves as Americans first or Democrat or Republican first? And you know, huh. Because if we think of ourselves as Americans first, we then that frames it differently than, than the sport, the Yankees versus the Dodgers, Democrats versus the Republicans. It also reminds me of the interview we did with the authors of, you know, the Upswing and Bowling Alone. This notion of, you know, the lack. Yeah, the lack of group dynamic. And if I'm understanding, what you're saying is, yes, we're all part of institutions already on one degree or another, and we should take those roles seriously. But it also, in a sense, is an invitation to be involved in more institutions and groups and then try to play a leadership role and really develop character and help form that group.

Yuval Levin: Exactly. And this is part of why the breakdown of civil society, which Robert Putnam points to so well, is such an enormous problem. The sense of alienation and loneliness that people have. What that means is they don't have that we. There's not somewhere where they feel like, I belong here. I have a role here. I would be missed if I were absent. Something is required of me. I think we tell ourselves in a free society that we just want choices and control. We want whatever we want. But the fact is, as human beings, we always need to be needed. We need there to be someplace where people expect something of us and where we know that if we didn't show up and do it, something would go wrong. That gives us meaning in life. It gives us a sense of purpose and belonging, and we all need that kind of connection in some way. And, um, you know, not everybody has the good fortune to have a flourishing family or to be part of a religious community that treats them that way or to have a job that gives them, uh, that opportunity. But we all should look to have at least some of those kinds of connections in our lives, to build them for ourselves and for other people, because it's just impossible for human beings to flourish without that kind of connection and community.

Host: As we're moving forward in the Puck, we're trying to see where the world is going, so to speak. You want to skate to where the puck is. When you think about the next 10 or 20 years and you think about what gives you optimism or hope, do you see things developing in a way that we can find some hope in?

Yuval Levin: I do have hope. I have hope in part because I think that Americans are never ultimately satisfied with m. With a mess with a muck. Everybody now is basically aware that our public life and our politics are not in a good place. You don't find a lot of Americans who think, this is going great. Let's do more of this in American politics. And so that suggests to me that we are approaching a period of openness to reform and to change. And at the same time we're also at a very dynamic place in our economy, potentially in our culture now. There are risks. I think there are a lot of ways in which a, uh, technology like artificial intelligence could pose new and enormous problems for us. There are also a lot of ways in which it's going to create new opportunities. And Americans are good at those kind of moments. It's going to be rough, we're going to run into challenges, but ultimately we're good at that kind of long term adaptive building. And I do see in the rising generation a uh, desire to belong, a uh, desire for a more meaningful kind of connection. And I think we're seeing some, the beginnings of some turnarounds in the kinds of trends we've been talking about. You know, around 2012 you begin to see in the data, so about 15 years ago you begin to see in the data a uh, downward turn. You begin to see a uh, growth in self described isolation, loneliness. You begin to see suicide rates climb. You begin to see overdoses of opiates. In the last couple of years we've begun to see a uh, turn in the other direction. Overdoses are way down. Suicide rates are down now for four years in a row. Self described loneliness and isolation are down a little bit. People's time on social media is down, which I think is great news. Um, time on screens isn't down yet. But we can hope. There are reasons to think that people can see that some of what we've been doing to ourselves in the 21st century just isn't working for us. And I do think that Americans in the long run are good at learning these kinds of lessons and finding a way forward. But ultimately that's just a way of saying that I'm hopeful because I get to be an American. And if you're not hopeful about America, you're just not paying attention.

Host: That's a beautiful place to end. And I will say in terms of that hope, yesterday, and it really was yesterday, both my son and my wife completely independently said that in terms of, you know, managing their anxiety in life, they were both going to try to spend less time on their phones. And I, I do believe when you look at what's going on in schools today, you look at Jonathan Haidt's work and otherwise, I do think people are realizing that we are being, you know, manipulated and purposely triggered and that we're, you know, we're going to have to come back and, and create a little space between the social media and news and stuff. So I, I, I, I do think there's hope hope there and I appreciate your hopeful message.

Yuval Levin: Thank you very much. I think you're right.

Host: The Puck Venture Capital and Beyond is brought to you by CMEG Advisors. If you enjoyed the conversation today and haven't yet subscribed to our show, you can find us on YouTube, iTunes, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Feel free to leave a review while you're there and maybe even a five star rating. You can also follow us on TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube for updates, highlights and more content from our team. Thanks for listening. We'll be back soon with a new episode.