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In the early days of Donald Trumps takeover of the Republican party, and of the conservative movement, many of us assumed that it was happening in complete defiance of the movements intellectual leadership.

Trump was aggressively anti-intellectual and routinely displayed a contemptuous indifference toward the ideas to which many intellectuals on the right have devoted their lives: small government, free markets, fiscal responsibility, moral character.

Many of them had previously lined up against him, drawing a line in the sand Against Trump.

Yet only a few years later, Trumps takeover of the conservative movement is nearly complete. You could interpret this one of three ways: That nobody ever really listened to the rights intellectuals; that the intellectuals never really believed their own supposed ideals; or that there was some hidden weakness on the part of conservative intellectuals that made them vulnerable to Trumpism.

As evidence for this third possibility, consider a revealing confession by one of those intellectuals at the blog American Greatness.

American Greatness is the kind of place that publishes anonymous white power poetry, yet qualifies, in the relative world of Breitbart and (these days) the Federalist, as highbrow Trumpism. It even manages to attract a number of reputable old names, the kind of conservative intellectuals who used to complain, back in the 1980s, about the coarsening of the culture. People like the author of that confession, Mark Bauerlein.

Yet Bauerlein is now arguing that both culture and politics are not a contest of ideas.

Margaret Thatcher once said that you have to win the argument before you win the vote, but when the Left controls the institutionsor rather, screens conservatives out of those institutions by applying tests of social opinion (Do you oppose or favor same-sex marriage?)Thatchers formulation can no longer hold. For 30 years, conservatives have won many debates, issued best-selling books, and swayed public opinion in many areas, but they havent slowed the long march of the Left through the institutions at all. For example, Allan Blooms The Closing of the American Mind and writings by Roger Kimball, Dinesh DSouza, Richard Bernstein, and countless others convinced the public that political correctness was becoming a serious problem on college campuses, but the coercive uniformity of opinion in higher education has only gotten worse since then. While the Right was beating them in the ideas arena, the Left was claiming office space.

Conservatives who appeal to liberal ideals in the context of existing institutions, be they the longstanding mores of cooperation in the Senate or academic freedom in the university, are beating their heads against a wall.

Donald Trump understands this. Thats one reason the Left despises him. He typically doesnt bother to debate ideas and ideals, but this is not anti-intellectualism, as the liberal says. It is, instead, his awareness that politics is now, first and foremost, a battle of persons, not ideologies or tax rates or trade.

The idea that Trump understands this is wishful thinking. Trump doesnt bother to debate ideas and ideals because he has neither the ability nor the inclination. Imputing ones own favored opinions onto Trumpwith no supporting evidenceas justification for his behavior is a consistent habit of his supporters.

Yet Bauerleins piece isnt really about Trump.

Instead, it is a confession of failure and a kind of personal breakdown, a crisis of belief. Bauerlein has been in academia for decades, held a position at the National Endowment for the Arts in the George W. Bush administration, and has offered up conservative cultural commentary in publications such as the New Criterion. So if we were going to have a new generation of compelling, interesting, and successful conservative intellectuals, both in the academy and out of it, he would have been involved in producing them.

If there is such a wave, I havent seen it. Instead, conservatism has become more lowbrow and ideologically depleted.

Donald Trump is not the cause of this decline, merely the symptom.

We could discuss some of the reasons behind this devolution: the longstanding conservative suspicion of ideology; the failed attempt to dress up religious traditionalism in a veneer of intellectualism; conservative intellectuals indulgence in populist anti-elitist rhetoric that has since been turned against them.

The important thing for our present purpose is not to answer this question, but to note that Bauerlein isnt trying to answer it, either. Instead, he concludes that if he has been unable to convince a new generation of his ideas, then convincing peoplewinning the argumentmust be impossible, and a waste of time.

Bauerlein reminds me of the evangelical Christians who have chosen Trump as their champion. That choice is a similar confession of failure, a confession that while Jerry Falwell may have gotten rich (and his son richer still), they have failed to spread the faith.

Some years ago, Ben Domenech perceptively identified this as the post-apocalyptic culture war, driven by an increasingly large portion of evangelicals who believe the culture wars are over, and they lost. This makes them a lot more open to the idea of an unprincipled blowhard who promises hes got your back on political correctness. (Domenech presented this in that Im-not-condoning-just-explaining style that tends to slip into condoningand eventually into cheerleading.)

Bauerlein is presenting us with this same notion of a post-apocalyptic culture warbut for intellectuals and academics.

But we should understand that Bauerleins approach is not a strategy for victory. Its a counsel of defeatism. He is not merely claiming that the contest of ideas has been lost, but that it cannot be won.

This would mean that the only way forward is to never lose another election.

This may not be a remotely realistic goal, but it does explain why support for Trump is so strident and inflexible, and why recalcitrant NeverTrumpers occupy so much space in the heads of Trumps supporters. Back in the old daysand by the old days, I mean five years agoit was commonly accepted that if a foolish or unworthy politician lost an election, it was probably his own fault, for not making a good enough case to the public. But all hope was not lost because the contest of ideas would go on.

But what happens when you give up on the contest of ideas? Then the political leader on your side at any given moment has to win, whoever he is and whatever his flaws. He has to remain in office and win re-election, because you have given up on winning converts and adding to your coalition. In this view, the crudest kind of partisanship remains as the only means conservative intellectuals have for achieving their ends.

This Flight 93 Election approach, in which Trump wins or the entire cause of the right dies, is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is also another example of the point I made recently about the blue dots of outrage, the tendency to inflate bad news and prophesy the end of the world. I warned that this can cause us to reject the means by which the world is actually changed and improved.

Even worse, it deprives us of the standards by which we would judge what is improved.

If we give up the contest of ideas, we give up the task of defining what our goals are, and we are much more likely to achieve the opposite of what we originally set out to do. I cant think of a better example of this than intellectuals who used to agonize over the coarsening of the culture becoming strident champions of one of our cultures coarsest products.

This cultural defeatism means passing up real opportunities. Consider, for example, that some of the strongest responses to the distorted, anti-American history of the 1619 Project have come from progressive intellectuals and the Worldwide Socialist Web Site. Or that old-fashioned liberals are beginning to discover the dangers of Political Correctness.

These are opportunities to make common cause and maybe to win some converts. After all, the political right as we know it was formed in the middle of the 20th century by intellectuals who came out of the Red Decade of the 1930s. Many conservative intellectuals were former communists who had seen the light.

The contest of ideas is never irrelevant and it never ends. The only certain way to lose it is to give up on it.

The rest is here:
The Closing of the Conservative Mind - The Bulwark

President Trump won acquittal Wednesday in the U.S. Senate, bringing to a close only the third presidential impeachment trial in American history. The votes split the country, tested civic norms and fed the tumultuous 2020 race for the White House.

A majority of senators expressed unease with President Trumps pressure campaign on Ukraine that resulted in the two articles of impeachment. But the final tallies 52-48 acquitting him of abuse of power and 53-47 to acquit him of obstruction of Congress investigation fell far short. Two-thirds of the 100-member Senate, or 67 votes, were needed to convict and remove President Trump from office.

The outcome Wednesday followed months of remarkable impeachment proceedings in the U.S. House of Representatives, followed by the U.S. Senate reflecting the nations unrelenting partisan divide three years into the Trump presidency.

What started as President Trumps request for Ukraine to do us a favor spun into a far-reaching, 28,000-page report compiled by House investigators accusing the president of engaging in shadow diplomacy that threatened U.S. foreign relations for personal political gain as he pressured the ally to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

No president has ever been removed by the Senate.

A politically emboldened President Trump has eagerly predicted vindication, deploying the verdict as a political anthem in his re-election bid. The president claims he did nothing wrong, decrying the witch hunt and hoax as extensions of special counsel Robert Muellers probe into Russian campaign interference in the 2016 presidential election by those out to get him from the start of his presidency.

The Wednesday afternoon vote was swift. With Chief Justice John Roberts presiding over the trial, senators sworn to do impartial justice stood at their desks for the roll call and stated their votes guilty or not guilty.

On the first article of impeachment, President Trump was charged with abuse of power. He was found not guilty. The second, obstruction of Congress, also produced a not guilty verdict.

Only one Republican, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the partys defeated 2012 presidential nominee, broke with the GOP.

Sen. Romney choked up as he said he drew on his faith and oath before God to announce his vote of guilty on the first charge, abuse of power. He would vote to acquit on the second charge.

Virginias senators, Democrats Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine, voted guilty on both charges.

Both President Bill Clinton in 1999 and President Andrew Johnson in 1868 drew cross-party support when they were left in office after an impeachment trial. Facing impeachment, President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 rather than face revolt from his own party.

Ahead of voting, some of the most closely watched senators took to the Senate floor to tell their constituents, and the nation, what they had decided. The Senate chaplain opened the trial with daily prayers for the senators, including one Wednesday seeking integrity.

Influential GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who is retiring, worried that a guilty verdict would pour gasoline on the fire of the nations culture wars over President Trump. He said the House proved its case, but it just didnt rise to the level of removing the president from office.

Read the original:
Senate fails to remove Trump from office - Richmond Free Press

Parasite's sweep of the Oscars on Sunday night for best original screenplay, international feature film, director and finally, and most improbably picture offered up a smorgasbord of joys. As a longtime Bong Joon Ho champion, I was thrilled to see one of cinema's finest and most unpredictable filmmakers recognized at the peak of his career, and on such a global stage. As an advocate for greater diversity within the entertainment industry, I was excited that the Academy honored a non-English-language film that happened to be, in my opinion, one of the two most deserving contenders in the best picture category (the other beingLittle Women), especially after last year's regressive pick,Green Book. And as a disappointed viewer let down by the ceremony's many elbowing allusions to the overwhelming whiteness of the nominees, I foundParasite's organic triumphs to be a welcome antidote to the Academy's performative white guilt.

But I felt most keenly my delight as a Korean American and an Asian American.Parasitewas a lot of firsts for Korean film as far as Western accolades go: the first winner of the Palme d'Or, the first winner of a Golden Globe, the first feature to compete for an Oscar in any category, the first to win every one of those aforementioned Oscar categories, of course, and the first non-English best picture Oscar winner. Bong will return home to South Korea a celebrity and a luminary. Korea is a tiny country one the majority of Americans probably couldn't find on a map and the outsized influence of its cultural contributions (which include K-pop, K-dramas, Korean cuisine, tae kwon do and its beauty industry) is an immense source of national pride. Growing up in Los Angeles' Koreatown, where Korean was and is spoken on every street, I never could have imagined my mother tongue spoken onstage repeatedly! just a few miles away at the Dolby Theatre.

It can be tricky, if not impossible, for many Asian Americans to fully identify with the country or countries of their ethnic origin. (For a deeply affecting illustration, look no further than Lulu Wang'sThe Farewell, which won best feature honors at the Spirit Awards on Saturday, making it a grand weekend for filmmakers of Asian descent.) The peculiarities of Asian America mean constantly proving our Americanness, our non-foreignness, our belonging. "Where are youreallyfrom?" is a question that haunts Asian Americans, which is why second- and third-generation immigrants may feel the need to play up our rights to this country.

That can mean playing down other parts of ourselves, whether by choice or by acculturation. I don't speak Korean most of the time, because most of the people I spend my time with don't know the language. I never proposed going out to eat Korean food with my non-Korean friends until my mid-20s, when I discovered that KBBQ was the thing to do in L.A. (The cuisinedu jouris probably something else now.) WatchingParasitebe embraced by so many people has been an unburdening, a de-otherization I didn't know I needed. The parts of myself I didn't think would be understood by non-Koreans maybe weren't so illegible, so unknowable, after all partly because of the way Korean culture has spread internationally, partly because I had preemptively decided others might find those aspects of me too esoteric or difficult to comprehend (and, to be perfectly honest, partly because I do not feel like ever explaining again why the question "Are you from South Korea or North Korea?" is profoundly stupid). And at a time when the White House is codifying xenophobia into policy and the 24-hour news cycle is fomenting anti-Asian paranoia stateside (through that hoariest of yellow-peril tropes, the filthy foreigner), I'll takeParasite's win as a small one for me, too.

Much of the comfort I've found inParasite's triumphs has to do with how deeply and specifically Korean I found the film to be. Since its October release, I've discussed nonstop inarticles, podcasts and TV appearances how technically brilliant Bong's signature tonal hairpins are, where scenes suddenly whiplash from, say, slapstick comedy to Greek tragedy to ironic satire. (My favorite example is a scene inThe Host, where Bong practicallydares you to laughat a mourning family for the histrionic display of their grief.) Those hairpins are a writerly and directorial achievement that has garnered Bong recognition in Korea, too, but there's also something distinctly Korean to me about his ability to weld extreme pain to earthy comedy, along with a profound distrust in government institutions and an eclectic mix of international influences.

Bong's filmography, which encompasses both urban Seoul and the more suburban and agricultural provinces, also feels more like the ordinary Korea I know, even with the sci-fi monsters and grisly murders, than the glossy futurism projected by K-pop. And because achievement and prestige among Asian Americans remain divisive issues conjuring accusations of abusive parenting and hollow ambition in some circles, and misplaced priorities and the erasure of the economic diversity within Asian America in others Parasite's grappling with such striving and its costs without the cacophonous noise of the American culture wars in the background was bracing.

But the sight that made me arguably happiest duringParasite's reign during awards season might be Bong's seeming lack of self-consciousness, his enjoyment of the privileges of the international auteur. For the most part and until extremely recently, Hollywood has preferred Mexican directors to Mexican American ones, Asian actors to Asian Americans ones. A standard interview question to American actors of color has become "What was your worst audition?" rare is the answer that doesn't involve race. Maybe because he had little to prove, at least race-wise, Bong acted his refreshingly carefree self, from the film's initial rollout through his awards campaign and Oscar night. Even beforeParasite's release, he insulted the Academy by calling the Oscars a "local" prize. WhenParasitetook the Golden Globe for best foreign language film, he chided Americans for being so incurious about all the movies on the other side of "the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles."

I laughed, and winced, at those comments. They're totally on-point, and they remind me of nearly every one of my middle-aged relatives in Korea, to whom bluntness is a given, not an option. They also made me wonder if the notoriously thin-skinned Hollywood elite and Americans as a whole would backlash, and whether that meant Bong had hobbled his own chances with his plain-spoken wit. Then there he was again, onstage Oscar night, flouting traditional awards etiquette by openly admiring his trophy while his co-writer Han Jin-won gave a heartfelt speech, and, later, making his Oscars kiss each other for the camera. Backstage, he said he came up with the idea forParasite"because I'm a fucking weirdo." The remark flung a hundred and one stereotypes about meek, dutiful, robotic Asian men out the window.

So what's next? Hollywood and the Oscars are so broken in so many ways that, if there were to be aParasiteeffect, it could be so many things: a more globally attuned Academy, a heartier embrace of movies by and about people of color, an even greater consideration of smaller films, many more firsts. Or we could start smaller: with more leaps over that one-inch-tall barrier. It's easy if you try.

See the rest here:
The Liberating Power of the 'Parasite' Oscar Win - Hollywood Reporter

Donald Trump delivered his third and potentially last formal State of the Union address from the well of the House chamber where he was impeached on the eve of his likely acquittal by a deeply divided Senate. The 78-minute speech sought to look past impeachment to his re-election in November. He touted his accomplishments, claiming a strong economy, the killing of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani and the passage of a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill.

But the mood was fraught on the eve of his acquittal, which is expected to take place on Wednesday as Republican loyalists stand by him. Few Democrats stood to clap for the president as Republicans chanted four more years.

Here are five key takeaways:

Trump dedicated nearly 20 minutes to ticking through his economic accomplishments, delivering a mix of dubious claims and exaggerations.

Our economy is the best it has ever been, Trump falsely claimed. While the unemployment rate is at a 50-year low and wages have risen, the economy is far from the best ever.

But other boasts were true: average unemployment is lower now than any administration in the history of our country. He touted the bipartisan renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, now called the USMCA as well as a deal with China to ease the trade war.

The rosy economic indicators could provide strong tailwinds for the president as he seeks re-election, especially if he faces a Democratic opponent who seeks to remake the economy as a number of candidates have proposed.

Trump inaccurately claimed USMCA would create 100,000 new high-paying American auto jobs. A report released by the US International Trade Commission estimated that the deal would add only 28,000 auto industry jobs in the six years following its implementation.

Ever eager to fan the flames of Americas culture wars, Trump delivered extended riffs on immigration, abortion, guns and religious liberty red meat to his conservative base.

We dont punish prayer, he declared before vowing to always protect your second amendment right to keep and bear arms.

He highlighted in grisly detail the stories of two US citizens murdered by an undocumented immigrant, a way to slam cities that refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement to enforce immigration law. At another point, he called on Congress to pass a federal ban on late-term abortions.

He also praised his appointment of two conservative supreme court justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, both of whom beamed back at the president from the front of the chamber.

We have many in the pipeline, Trump said, as Republicans broke into another round of deafening applause.

In less than 24 hours, Trump will become the third US president to be acquitted by the US Senate after being impeached by the House. But unlike his Twitter feed, where Trump airs all manner of grievances about the trial and the House leaders who led the effort, he made no mention of it in tonights speech.

However, the tension was clear. When Trump approached the rostrum, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, appeared to extend her hand but he refused to shake it.

She then omitted the flourish of announcing I have the high privilege and distinct honor of presenting to you the president of the United States, instead simply introducing him directly to the chamber. Then, after Trump finished his remarks, Pelosi tore up a copy of the speech.

Asked by reporters why she did that, Pelosi replied that it was the courteous thing to do.

No matter who the Democratic presidential nominee is in November, Trump and Republicans already plan to define the election as a battle to protect the country against socialism.

In his speech, Trump vowed to never let socialism destroy American healthcare! while also dishonestly claiming that he would always protect patients with pre-existing conditions. In 2017, Republicans with Trumps strong support, attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a plan that would throw millions of Americans off their healthcare and would not guarantee its protections.

At another point, Trump pointed to one of his guests, Juan Guaid, the Venezuelan opposition leader who the US recognizes as the countrys rightful leader. Trump called the nations current president, Nicols Maduro, a socialist dictator and illegitimate ruler.

Socialism destroys nations, Trump said to whoops and cheers from Republicans. But always remember, freedom unifies the soul.

Its a tradition for the White House and members of Congress to invite guests who reflect their political priorities. Among the guests who attended on behalf of the president and first lady was Rush Limbaugh, the controversial conservative radio show host who announced this week that he is undergoing surgery for advanced lung cancer.

During his remarks, Trump announced that he would receive the countrys highest civilian honor, the presidential medal of freedom. In an unusual move, Trump paused his speech for Melania Trump to present him with the medal.

It was one of several surprises Trump had in store for his guests. He bestowed an education scholarship on a young girl whose mother could not afford to send her to a private school. And then, in a made-for-TV moment, Sergeant First Class Townsend Williams returned from deployment in Afghanistan to surprise his wife and children in the first ladys box.

Meanwhile, a handful of Democratic lawmakers chose to skip the affair altogether. The New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she did not want to legitimize the presidents actions.

After much deliberation, I have decided that I will not use my presence at a state ceremony to normalize Trumps lawless conduct & subversion of the Constitution, she wrote on Twitter. None of this is normal, and I will not legitimize it.

The Massachusetts congresswoman Ayanna Pressley said she could not in good conscience attend the speech, when he incessantly stokes fear in people of color, women, healthcare providers, LGBTQ+ communities, low-income families, and many more.

Congressman Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat, attended the speech but left halfway through.

I just walked out of the #StateOfTheUnion, he wrote. Ive had enough. Its like watching professional wrestling. Its all fake.

More here:
Trump's State of the Union address: five key takeaways - The Guardian

The U.S. Capitol at sunset, November 22, 2019(Loren Elliott/Reuters)A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream, by Yuval Levin (Basic Books, 256 pp., $28)

We are born as crooked creatures prone to waywardness and sin, Yuval Levin writes in his new book, A Time to Build, originally delivered as the Charles E. Test Lectures at Princeton. As a result we continuously require moral and social formation to refine and develop our defective characters. What we have largely forgotten, Levin argues, is that institutions play a part in these processes of soul formation: They structure our perceptions and interactions, and as a result they structure us. They form our habits, our expectations, and ultimately our character.

But our institutions are breaking down. In an age that values the unformed self, Levin writes, we no longer try very hard to uphold the formative traditions of the institutions in which we find ourselves. Instead of giving our hearts to our little platoons, we affect a cynical distance from them and play the disgruntled outsider. We think of our institutions less as molds that shape our character than as platforms that enable us to market our personal brands through attention-getting stunts and playacting on social media.

Thus the presidency and Congress, Levin writes, become stages for political performance art by strutting politicians, the university becomes a venue for vain virtue signaling by disaffected scholars with a yen for street theater, and journalism becomes indistinguishable from activism as scribes seek cable-TV notoriety by staking out the most outr positions in the culture wars. Rather than commit ourselves to our institutions, we pack up and move on whenever we feel that a particular outfit isnt working for me, as the duchess of Sussex is alleged to have said of the British monarchy before she and Prince Harry lit out for the fresher territory of the @sussexroyal brand.

None of these forms of self-indulgence is entirely new. But Levin argues that where once institutional mores restrained the more destructive forms of aggrandizement, todays institutions have lost their corrective, soul-forming power: They no longer give us the tools of judgment and character and habit to use our freedom responsibly and effectively. He attributes this institutional decay to a decline in the expectation that our institutions should be formative. If we no longer believe that there are, in fact, objectively better and worse ways of being formed, we can only resent whatever character-forming practices vestigially linger in our institutions.

Liberal education is one casualty of this resistance to the institutional molding of character in accordance with an ideal. From the seminaries of Athens to the grammar school that helped form the mind of Shakespeare, teachers agreed that nothing was more likely to awaken and shape a young brain than a wallow in what Matthew Arnold called the best that has been thought and said in the world. But where untaught formlessness is the ideal, the formative character of such an enterprise is suspect, a threat to the authentic, untutored self. Were all noble savages now.

Levin traces the same antipathy to soul formation in the professions. Before 1850, Henry Adams said, lawyers, physicians, professors, and merchants were classes, and acted not as individuals, but as though they were clergymen and each profession were a church. By contrast, todays professional meritocrats, Levin writes, are radically individualistic and dismally technocratic, with little concern for the distinctive integrities of the institutions they tenuously inhabit.

Yet amid the general disintegration some institutions have retained their formative character. In the Vietnam era the code of the officer corps, Duty Honor Country, was in danger of being lost. The only place I learned about these things, a young captain said, was from a copy of the Officers Guide that I happened to buy one day in the bookstore. But the military refashioned itself and today maintains a high degree of institutional esprit de corps.

Even so the judiciary, which, Levin observes, has done a better job than many other governing institutions in appealing to an ideal of integrity that is fundamentally institutional in character and also rooted in something of a professional ethos. This institutional pride is clearly present in Chief Justice Roberts, whose heart is pledged to the code of the judge bound in honor, in his words, to pronounce judgment without fear or favor, deciding each matter with humility, integrity, and dispatch.

But if Levin is right, these institutions are the exception. Americans, he observes, have long been skeptical of institutional allegiance. Our culture, he writes, has its roots in a dissenting Protestantism that sought a direct connection to the divine and rejected as inauthentic or illegitimate most forms of institutional mediation. A preoccupation with self-realization, he says, makes us suspicious of enterprises that seek to cast us in a particular mold. Yet it may be that radical Protestantisms prosaic descendant, Yankee utilitarianism, has done quite as much as Calvinism itself to frustrate the ability of our institutions to command the heart.

At the bottom of every really vital institution there is always a whiff of poetry or mysticism. Man without mysticism may be, as Whittaker Chambers said, a monster, but institutions that lack it are soulless. Why does the judge don his robe, the priest his surplice, the scholar his gown, the barrister his wig, the queen her crown? It is all a piece of (perhaps not very impressive) magic, yet it has its effect. The art of the civilizing myth, the pleasing illusion, which once did something to hallow the institution, has given way to a dress-down cult of the merely functional, a culture of drabness. Ernest Renan said of his hometown of Trguier in Brittany that it was enveloped in an atmosphere of mythology as dense as Benares. Christ Church, Oxford, was saturated, John Ruskin remembered, in a mysticism made palpable in the living and musical forms of its ritual and ceremony. Smoke and mirrors perhaps, yet Ruskin had no doubt that it animated the young toffs for the highest duties owed to their country. But we Americans, Wallace Stevens says, never lived in a time / When mythology was possible.

The failure of myth and mysticism in the modern institution is complemented by an obliteration of institutional memory. The traditional institution has its pedigree and its ancestral portraits, a poetry that brings to life the different phases of its growth, so that the past always is obtruding on the present, and the present is continuously throwing an unsuspected light on the past. But the typical organization today exists in the shallow present of Henry Jamess Mrs. Worthingham, who was up to everything, aware of everything if one counted from a short enough time back (from week before last, say, and as if quantities of history had burst upon the world within the fortnight).

Levin is alive to the lack of place, connection, and belonging in American life and institutions, but his solutions seem a bit tepid and hortatory. He envisions lawyers developing a professional code that will hold them to a standard that has more to do with integrity than with raw intellect. But in fact the bar is always coming up with these kinds of reformatory codes. They are the work of committees and end in regulations that perpetuate all the vicious mediocrity Matthew Arnold, in Culture and Anarchy, foresaw in efforts to create an English Academy that would codify the integrity of English letters.

Rod Drehers Benedict Option might be a better way forward. If the archaic techniques of the separatist institutions he proposes really can promote a richer and more satisfying common life if they really are able to make of places and institutions what Florence was for Dante, a fair sheepfold, the center of a world they will catch on; the rest of us will try to emulate them. On the other hand, we might learn something from the pastoral instincts of the now-discredited WASPs, who, Levin observes, were raised and educated in ways intended to prepare them for responsibility and authority, to live up to a code of public service, humility, and institutional devotion. After the Civil War, when WASPs found themselves overshadowed by Gilded Age plutocrats, they reinvented themselves as a service class by means of the boarding school: an institutional combination of muscular rigor (the football field), humane education (the classics), and poetical mysticism (the chapel) that bit deep into the souls of impressionable youths. Much in this pastoral approach will now seem as archaic as Arnolds Rugby Chapel, but it may be that some of the techniques the WASPs used to foster a culture of civic conscience and institutional loyalty can be grafted onto our own soul-corroding schools.

Levins A Time to Build is a brilliant piece of work: lucid, dispassionate, composed in a calm and philosophic tone that rises above the rancor of the moment; its focus on institutional decline promises to change the terms of many sterile debates. But the institutional gangrene to which Levin draws attention seems to me to go beyond what the unguents in our current chrismatories can heal. To reform souls as crooked as ours, one wants a richer brew. One wants myths: But when one calls them myths, one implicitly concedes they arent true. A difficulty no amount of ingenuity can solve.

This article appears as Twilight of the Institutions in the February 24, 2020, print edition of National Review.

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'A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream' Book...