Avoiding Bloodshed: The Promise of Liberal Democracy

Could the Constitution provide the antidote to polarization?

Yuval Levin thinks so. The director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Levin is the author of a new book titled American Covenant. In it, and during this episode, Levin identifies the reasons people feel as though America is at a breaking point and meaningful opportunities for reuniting.

He and Moore consider why fragmentation is happening, the naiveté of cynicism, and ways the party system has—and hasn’t—worked well for the United States. They discuss partisanship, the potential upsides of ranked-choice voting in primaries, and the importance of seeing one another not primarily as political beings but as human beings.

Yuval Levin’s work:

• American Covenant, How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again by Yuval Levin
• American Enterprise Institute
• National Affairs
• The New Atlantis
• National Review
• The New York Times

Resources mentioned in this episode or recommended by the guest include:

• The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis
• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance
• “My Unsettling Interview with Steve Bannon” by David Brooks
• The West Wing: “Night Five”
• The Sword and the Trowel by Charles Spurgeon

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