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

A leading conservative intellectual argues that to renew America we must recommit to our institutions 

“A Time to Build is exactly what America needs right now.” —Wall Street Journal  

Americans are living through a social crisis. Our politics are polarized and bitterly divided, and culture wars rage across the country. Left and right alike have blamed our institutions and use only metaphors of destruction to describe the path forward: cancelling, defunding, draining the swamp. But, as Yuval Levin argues, this is a misguided prescription rooted in a defective diagnosis. The social crisis we confront is defined not by an oppressive presence but by a debilitating absence of the forces that unite us.  

In A Time to Build, Levin argues that today is not a time to tear down, but rather to build and rebuild by committing ourselves to the institutions around us. From the military to churches, from families to schools, these institutions provide the forms and structures we need to be free. By taking concrete steps to help them be more trustworthy, we can renew the ties that bind Americans to one another. 

Yuval Levin is director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute. The founder and editor of National Affairs, he is a senior editor at the New Atlantis, contributing editor at National Review, and contributing opinion writer at the New York Times. His other books include The Fractured Republic and American Covenant. He lives in Maryland.