Welcome to the Recent Speaches Podcast presented by BYU Speaches, featuring inspiring new

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This forum address entitled Why Institutions Matter was given on February 25th of 2025 by Yuval

Levin, then editor of national affairs and director of social, cultural, and constitutional

studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that enormously. It's a tremendous honor to be part of a BYU forum.

It's my first time at BYU. I spent a lot of time on college campuses, but there's really a way in which the sense of mission is imbued in this place in a way that stands out.

It's distinct.

I have to say, I also like the way there's a big letter Y on everything, which really speaks to me.

Personally, I want to talk with you about a subject that I think is at the heart of a lot of our political and social challenges now.

A set of problems that we all encounter in our daily lives in 21st century America,

but that we are not always quite able to put into words.

It's the sense we increasingly have that something very important is broken down in our

culture, in our politics, and our common life, and that this breakdown

is undermined trust, cooperation, our ability to just live in peace with other Americans,

and to act together on common problems. That something has gone wrong in American public life

is pretty clear, but exactly what that is, isn't actually as clear as we sometimes think or maybe

pretend. We know that it's not just about the politics of the last few years. We know it's not

just about the pandemic of a few years ago or inflation or the culture war. All of those have made

it worse. But the it is something else. It's something deeper. We Americans are living through

...