A Decentralizing Remedy for the Diseases of a Fractured Republic: A Conversation with Yuval Levin

This edition of Liberty Law Talk welcomes back Yuval Levin to discuss his latest book, The Fractured Republic. Levin notes that our decentralizing republic, as observed in the decades long trends in social, economic, religious, and cultural diffusion, provides both opportunities and difficulties. America’s ongoing deconsolidation from a nearly unprecedented period of national cohesion after World War II has led to numerous benefits for individual freedom and economic prosperity. However, if we are more free than ever, we may also be more alone than ever and bereft of the contexts for a responsible freedom and citizenship.

And this has sparked a politics of nostalgia on both the Right and the Left with each group desiring to remake what has been lost from mid-century America. Or, as one boor continually observes, “Make American Great Again.” To these challenges, Levin addresses a series of local and personalist ideas and remedies that rely on our decentralized condition in an attempt to develop a future consensus for policies rooted in who we have become rather than a politics of nostalgia.