Summary Of The Fractured Republic By Yuval Levin

In the book, “The Fractured Republic” the author, Yuval Levin tells of how he is a strong conservative, but he looks at both sides of our country's dysfunctional political polar division in this perceptive look at the country’s acute crisis of social fragmentation. The former White House staffer under President George W Bush sees both progressives and conservatives as wallowing in unhealthy nostalgia. The Fractured Republic argues eloquently that striving for a better future means resisting romanticising the past. Republicans, in Levin’s view, tend to hark back to 1981. In the first full year of his presidency, the conservative Ronald Reagan set about implementing free market reforms in earnest. The nostalgia of the Democrats, in contrast,

Both social order and economic security have been weakened. The political system shows little awareness of these problems and is, in any case, ill equipped to deal with them. Levin’s concerns are widely shared among social thinkers, although their exact diagnoses and conclusions vary. Robert Putnam, a Harvard academic, has bemoaned the decline of social capital in US society. Bill Bishop, a prominent journalist, has used demographic data to show Americans increasingly choose to live with like-minded neighbours. Charles Murray, a conservative academic, has noted how a powerful upper class has separated itself from the rest of society. For Democrats, and those who more generally define themselves as progressive, economic inequality is generally central to this concern. Typically, they criticise the ostentatious and heartless super-rich for detaching itself from the rest of society. Levin recognises that high inequality is a reality but is surely right to argue that it is an effect rather than a cause. The wealthy, for instance, have benefited from the booming of the financial sector and financial assets over the

But they also tend to have significantly higher marriage rates, lower divorce rates and more religious commitment. While Levin is critical of both conservatives and progressives, he argues, not surprisingly, that the right is better able to devise solutions. His preference is for reinvigoration of what he calls mediating institutions in society: a strengthening of community life. As a self-professed conservative, he naturally sees the family as playing a central role in achieving this task. But he also argues for increased importance to be attached to liberal education (as opposed to vocational learning) and greater civic engagement. Above all, he emphasises the importance of religious institutions, as he sees these as a direct challenge to this fractured age. This emphasis on mediating institutions is in line with his support for what he calls a modernised politics of subsidiarity — the idea that key decisions should be made as close to the community level as reasonably possible. Above all, Levin emphasises the importance of religious institutions, as he sees these as a direct challenge to this fractured age Despite the many insights in Levin’s work there are good reasons to call some of his key points into