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Restoring Trust in American Institutions with Yuval Levin | BRI Scholar Talks

How can we restore trust in American institutions? To explore this question, BRI Senior Fellow Tony Williams is joined by Yuval Levin, Senior Fellow at the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy and Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Together they discuss the decline of institutions and their role in promoting better social interactions and creating a common purpose. How have institutions become platforms for performative outrage and self-promotion rather than healthy civic organizations?

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Essay

The Purpose of Government

2030 Words

The structural or institutional features of the American constitutional order only make sense in the context of what the Founders hoped to achieve --securing the right of the American people to live decent, worthwhile lives according to their own goals and faculties. The thoughtful preservation of those institutions, occasionally through necessary corrective measures, depends on a proper understanding of what it is that they are designed to promote as well as an appreciation of how to manage those institutions to serve the best interests of the American people. All of this requires a citizenry with the skills and dispositions necessary for republican self-government, that is, a citizen body whose members understand and act to promote justice.