What Conservatism Is for Today | Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin, founding editor of National Affairs and the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, has spent his career studying the institutions that shape American life. I wanted to sit down with him to discuss this unsettled moment in American politics—one in which both parties are fractured and governance often feels short-term and election-driven.

We had a wide-ranging conversation about the philosophical differences between conservative and progressive thinking as well as the populist and conspiratorial impulses on the right today. Yuval argues that the most consequential divide in American politics today is not left versus right, but populism versus elitism. We also discussed the limits of presidential power and the risk that short-term victories can provoke long-term backlash, including in the fight for the soul of American higher education. Along the way, we explored how artificial intelligence will change politics, the crisis of the decline of religion, and the importance of originalism as a judicial policy.

Yuval’s core claim is simple: The Constitution was built for a divided moment like this. Its purpose is to channel disagreement into negotiation, compromise, and shared responsibility. Reforms that bypass that structure may win headlines, but they rarely last. Durable change requires working within the institutions that were designed to hold the nation together.