Something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is the way we often conflate two very distinct things when we assign political labels. The first is ideology, which describes our vision of a just society. The second is something less discussed but equally important: temperament. It describes how we approach social problems, how fast we think society can change, and how we understand the constraints upon us.

Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, the editor-in-chief of the public policy journal National Affairs, and the author of the upcoming book A Time to Build. Levin is one of the most thoughtful articulators of both conservative temperament and ideology. And, perhaps for that reason, his is one of the most important criticisms of what the conservative movement has become today.

There’s a lot in this conversation, in part because Levin’s book speaks to mine in interesting ways, but among the topics we discuss are:

The conservative view of human nature
Why the conservative temperament is increasingly diverging from the conservative movement
What theories of American politics get wrong about the reality of American life
The case Levin makes to socialists
How economic debates are often moral debates in disguise
Levin’s rebuttal to my book
The crucial difference between “formative” and “performative” social institutions
Why the most fundamental problems in American life are cultural, not economic
Why Levin thinks the New York Times should not allow its journalists to be on Twitter
Whether we can restore trust in our institutions without changing the incentives and systems that surround them