Coincidentally, I picked up at about the same time their latest books.
Bari Weiss’ is How to Fight Anti-Semitism. On p. 167, she writes,
I suddenly saw all of the debates and hand-wringing inside the Jewish community about the latest boycott of Israeli hummus at the local food co-op, or the right response to Israeli Apartheid Week, or the proper approach to the appearance of a swastika on campus. . .as not just a waste of our precious time but a betrayal of what we were meant to do and be. I began to realize that building was better than begging, affirming better than adjuring. Not just better strategically, but better for Jew emotionally and intellectually and spiritually.
She cites this essay by Ze’ev Maghen, which I recommend.
Levin’s is A Time to Build, and it will not come out until next January. He sent me an advance copy. In a Martin Gurri world (my terminology), he argues that we need to work to build up institutions. p. 41:
Our challenge is less to calm the forces that are pelting our society than to reinforce the structures that hold it together. That calls for a spirit of building and rebuilding, more than of tearing down. It calls for approaching broken institutions with a disposition to repair so as to make them better versions of themselves.
Out of context, that probably sounds bland. Hardly a passage that would entice you. But the book is actually a must-read, with a lot for you to sink your teeth into. If I count it as 2019, it will make my list of best books of the year.
Posturing. Talk about Pollyannish.
You consider Yuval Levin Pollyandish? I guess it depends on where you sit in the Cassandra-Pollyanna spectrum. If you are a Cassandra, anyone who disagrees with you is a Pollyanna.
Wherever you place Edmund Burke on the spectrum, I think Levin would be honoured to sit at his side.
I https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/08/nationalism-populism-and-saving-ourselves-from-a-dark-future/
A dark future, huh. So you are more of a super natural fire-and-brimstone Cassandra, closer to Fred Phelps and his Westboro whack-jobs than to Edmund Burke. Good to know.
Strong gods, good grief.
My attitude is that the first priority of Levin, and Kling for that matter, is to put the proles in their place. Ann Althouse has an excellent running theme on bullshit calls for civility. I think this “building” meme falls into that category.
I think this goal to build up rather than tear down is incredibly important, but does anyone have an example of people/groups that are having much success in building institutions?
I’d really like to see folks on the contrarian right and contrarian left find common ground in realizing 1) there is more overlap in their worldviews than they realize and 2) the real fight is against the failing establishment political/media/corporatist status quo. But I don’t see hardly any of that – it’s way too easy and fun to mock people on the other side than try to find common ground.
I guess it depends on the timescales but I’d offer the following off the top of my head:
1. Political
1.1 New Zealand’s point based immigration system, copied by many
1.2 Canada’s creation of the “College” (vs University) system for trade/technical education in the 60’s
1.3 International Human Rights: the Genocide Convention promoted by Raphael Lemkin as described in the documentary “Watchers of the Sky”
2. Corporatist
2.1 Y-Combinator: the startup incubator model created/promoted by Paul Graham
2.2 Alibaba: the early focus on grassroots small businesses without an established business/banking infrastructure (vs. eBay)
3. Media
3.1 Wikipedia – this model has changed the world
Oh, and the whole Open Source movement and many of its projects: Linux, Git, GitHub, etc.
I realize my comment on this is from a modern and American-centric perspective (although similar dynamics are playing out in lots of places), but I think that’s consistent with the two quotes in Arnold’s post and his commentary on current affairs (talking about Martin Gurri, etc).
It just seems to me there is a growing awareness of the failures of our elite institutions, and on one side you have a vaguely libertarian critique of big government and central planning, on the other side there is a leftist criticism of big business and a focus on social justice issues. But everyone seems focused on tearing down the other side.
There’s an element of old man yells at cloud going on here, but I worry about our social fabric, and more importantly, I realize how difficult it is to swim against a media tide that promotes little besides clickbait and outrage. So I desperately want to find folks who are making progress on “building”, but I haven’t had a lot of success in doing so.
I guess I’m the target audience for this Yuval Levin book, so I should place my pre-order now.
That is fair and I am admittedly skeptical of Gurri’s views on elites but I think I could change my mind given the right evidence. I think of your “institutional failures” as “institutional problems” but I think we would generally agree on most issues.
I too am looking forward to Levin’s new book.
I agree that “institutional problems” may be a better term (although I’d argue institutions like congress and our mass media are closer to failed), and I’m in no way advocating for a world without institutions. That gets to the core of why I like the framework of building or repairing rather than taking the easy way out of just criticizing.
Build up what institutions? The local church?
Honestly, when did the church hold a high position in our society? I have seen Lyman Stone’s historical weekly church going from 19th century and we have more attendance than in the 19th century. The high point was 1960 with about 50% of population going once a week. (The view of John Ford 19th century America is nice to believe but heavy church was the exception not the reality. Yes, the majority of the population was Christian. It might have been as a simple as transportation of going 3 hours to church each way.)
I get the Post-WW2 boom the trust with institutions was the highest ever but again this was the historical outlier versus the historical reality.
I think the problem is not “building up the church.” A problem for which the church may be a proxy is norms around courtship, marriage, and child-rearing. Rather than look at the time series for weekly church attendance, it might be more telling to look at the time series for “children at the age of 14 living in the house with both biological parents,” which has been trending downward for about 50 years–see the link below.
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/two-nations-revisited
As is usually the case, there is a problem of selection bias and causal density, so it’s hard to identify causation.
Those who attend the church to build it up probably gain some benefit from doing so. It’s an empirical question and it would be hard to design good studies.
Kind of like being white in California. One has to take anti-white laws with a bit of humor and move on.
What California anti-white laws? Do you have an example at hand?
Application requirements:
Hispanic, African American, or other minority.
I see that all the time on government jobs. (Whites need not apply)
Racist lawsuits. If a minority group elects the wrong race, then in some cases of at-large voting, a minority of the minority can sue and have the (usually) white person removed. The law directly aimed at whites.
Then we have the custom of appointing only female senators.
Not to mention the extending of excuses for Black school misbehavior which usually does not apply to whites.
Kamala pursuing forced busing based on race.
The exception to these rules is that a white male has to be governor, as he can generally add and subtract.
Mostly BS but I am interested in the “at large voting law” where a minority of a minority can get someone removed. Got a cite on this? I will try to look it up.
Maybe this.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB182
The linked Ze’ev Maghen essay expresses outrage at Jewish assimilation, outrage that many Jews don’t learn classic Hebrew or visit their ethnic homeland, and outrage that many politically active Jews spend lots of time focused on the problems of blacks rather than the problems of Jews.
This type of ethnic identity purism strikes me as an odd recommendation from Arnold Kling. I find myself frustrated that pundits like Kling talk about issues such as identity and the related issue of immigration, but don’t seem to have a logically coherent principle or position. Here, Kling seems to be supporting an extremely vocal proponent of Israel as an ethnically pure homeland, protected by a militarized border fence, with a distinct ethnic language and identity. This isn’t at all consistent with Kling’s other writings on identity and immigration.
I think in some sense identity politics and ethnonationalism tends toward being, at the margin, a devil’s workshop.
The decades-ago Black Avenger from A.M. Talk Radio, Ken Hamblin, mentioned it. “Do not dabble in that devil’s workshop.”
You never know what forces you are conjuring.
It can all seem very glib and light-hearted until some inchoate force is summoned, like the sorcerer’s apprentice.
I’m making this comment here but it could go anywhere–it’s not really in response to your comment. Nor is it in response to today’s initial post, or whatever Prof. Arnold Kling has been posting lately. It’s just a free-floating comment.
Just thinking out loud–about something that’s been on my mind lately.
Careful Icarus, you might be a few feathers shy of a logically coherent wing.
This isn’t a logical counter-argument, but simply an oblique critique.
Perhaps a little oblique. In mythology, Icarus flew too close to the sun due to hubris. If you believe your criticism of Kling that I’ve quoted is logically coherent or remotely accurate then you might need to do some self-reflection, Icarus. Just saying. Sometimes metaphors are concrete.
In Russia, many men are, literally, re-building Churches.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/father-alexeys-carpentry-shop-yakovlev/
Rod also has lots of how Russia is so anti-LGBTQ agenda, especially against Drag Queen reading hour and teaching gay sex to children. The gays are busy building gay-supportive new norms – and demonizing anybody who disagrees, which has been a pretty good building strategy so far. But is creating the anti-gay backlash.
Not all new buildings are beautiful, or good.