Uval Levin joins us again. He is chair of public policy at American Enterprise Institute,

editor of National Affairs, senior editor at New Atlantis, and contributing editor, commentator at

National Review and the New York Times. His books include The Fractured Republic and a Time to

build from family and community to Congress and the campus, how recommitting to our institutions

can revive the American dream. His new book brings those concerns

forward to year 2024. The title is American Covenant, How the Constitution Univide our

Nation and Could Again. That is our topic today. Welcome, Yvonne. Thank you very much for having me.

You say at the start that you're hopeful, but not necessarily optimistic.

This hope, too, you say, is a peculiarly American thing. What is American hope? Yeah, you know,

I'm a conservative, so I'm not an optimist. I don't just expect good things to happen, but I'm also

not a pessimist. I don't simply expect bad things to happen. I think

in a lot of ways, the direction of our future as a society is up to us. And I'm hopeful because we

have a lot to work with, and a lot of what we have to work with is the inherited political order

that comes to us through the form of our constitution and our political

system, I think that for it to work for us, we have to recognize what it is and why. And that means

really becoming reacquainted with the American Constitution. That's really the purpose of this book

is to help people become reacquainted with a political order that actually has a lot to

offer us in this moment. I think this is a time when we can fall into despair. There are reasons for that.

There are reasons to really worry about the future of the American project. There are reasons to

worry that some of our fellow citizens just don't have the same sense of what it's for as we do

and as the American system does. But I think that reminding the rising generation what it's for as we do and as the American system does.

But I think that reminding the rising generation that its inheritance is not, in fact,

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