The Fractured Republic
Renewing America's Social Contract in the Age of Individualism
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Narrated by:
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Kevin T. Collins
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By:
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Yuval Levin
About this listen
Americans today are frustrated and anxious. Our economy is sluggish and leaves workers insecure. Income inequality, cultural divisions, and political polarization increasingly pull us apart. Our governing institutions often seem paralyzed. And our politics has failed to rise to these challenges.
No wonder, then, that Americans - and the politicians who represent them - are overwhelmingly nostalgic for a better time. The left looks back to the middle of the 20th century, when unions were strong, large public programs promised to solve pressing social problems, and the movements for racial integration and sexual equality were advancing. The right looks back to the Reagan era, when deregulation and lower taxes spurred the economy, cultural traditionalism seemed resurgent, and America was confident and optimistic. Each side thinks returning to its golden age could solve America's problems.
In The Fractured Republic, Yuval Levin argues that this politics of nostalgia is failing 21st-century Americans. Both parties are blind to how America has changed over the past half century - as the large, consolidated institutions that once dominated our economy, politics, and culture have fragmented and become smaller, more diverse, and personalized. Individualism, dynamism, and liberalization have come at the cost of dwindling solidarity, cohesion, and social order. This has left us with more choices in every realm of life but less security, stability, and national unity.
Both our strengths and our weaknesses are therefore consequences of these changes. And the dysfunctions of our fragmented national life will need to be answered by the strengths of our decentralized, divers, dynamic nation.
Levin argues that this calls for a modernizing politics that avoids both radical individualism and a centralizing statism and instead revives the middle layers of society - families and communities, schools and churches, charities and associations, local governments and markets. Through them, we can achieve not a single solution to the problems of our age, but multiple and tailored answers fitted to the daunting range of challenges we face and suited to enable an American revival.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2016 Yuval Levin (P)2016 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Our Divided Political Heart
- The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent
- By: E. J. Dionne
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Our Divided Political Heart will be the must-listen book of the 2012 election campaign. Offering an incisive analysis of how hyper-individualism is poisoning the nation's political atmosphere, E. J. Dionne Jr., argues that Americans can't agree on who we are because we can't agree on who we've been, or what it is, philosophically and spiritually, that makes us Americans.
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Good points and lots of good information
- By Jamie B on 08-15-12
By: E. J. Dionne
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When China Rules the World
- The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order
- By: Martin Jacques
- Narrated by: Scott Peterson
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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According to even the most conservative estimates, China will overtake the United States as the world's largest economy by 2027 and will ascend to the position of world economic leader by 2050. But the full repercussions of China's ascendancy-for itself and the rest of the globe-have been surprisingly little explained or understood.
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Lucid explanation of global economic trends
- By David Blake on 01-04-10
By: Martin Jacques
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The Socialist Temptation
- By: Iain Murray
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Just 30 years ago, socialism seemed utterly discredited. An economic, moral, and political failure, socialism had rightly been thrown on the ash heap of history after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Unfortunately, bad ideas never truly go away — and socialism has come back with a vengeance. A generation of young people who don’t remember the misery that socialism inflicted on Russia and Eastern Europe is embracing it all over again.
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Full Of Important Insights
- By Ralph Alderson on 12-17-20
By: Iain Murray
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Foreign Policy Begins at Home
- By: Richard Haass
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The biggest threat to the United States comes not from abroad but from within. This is the provocative, timely, and unexpected message of Council on Foreign Relations President Richard N. Haass’ Foreign Policy Begins at Home. A rising China, climate change, terrorism, a nuclear Iran, a turbulent Middle East, and a reckless North Korea all present serious challenges. But U.S. national security depends even more on the United States addressing its burgeoning deficit and debt, crumbling infrastructure, second-class schools, and outdated immigration system
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Last 4 years
- By Don on 07-22-17
By: Richard Haass
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The Upswing
- How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again
- By: Robert D. Putnam, Shaylyn Romney Garrett - contributor
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Deep and accelerating inequality; unprecedented political polarization; vitriolic public discourse; a fraying social fabric; public and private narcissism — Americans today seem to agree on only one thing: This is the worst of times. But we’ve been here before. During the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, America was highly individualistic, starkly unequal, fiercely polarized, and deeply fragmented, just as it is today.
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For Progressives only. Won't make sense otherwise
- By Dennis G. on 12-19-20
By: Robert D. Putnam, and others
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Creating Freedom
- The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future
- By: Raoul Martinez
- Narrated by: Steve West
- Length: 17 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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A manifesto for deep and radical change, Creating Freedom explores the limits placed on freedom by human nature and society. It explodes myths, calling for a profound transformation in the way we think about democracy, equality, and our own identities.
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The BEST book, I've listened to in a long time
- By G. Newton on 04-16-17
By: Raoul Martinez
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The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order
- America and the World in the Free Market Era
- By: Gary Gerstle
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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To be sure, neoliberalism has contributed to a number of alarming trends, not least of which has been a massive growth in income inequality. Yet as the eminent historian Gary Gerstle argues in The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, these indictments fail to reckon with the full contours of what neoliberalism was and why its worldview had such persuasive hold on both the right and the left for three decades.
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Cursory, unoriginal, class-blind
- By A Reviewer on 10-24-22
By: Gary Gerstle
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The Conscience of a Liberal
- By: Paul Krugman
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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America emerged from Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal with strong democratic values and broadly shared prosperity. But for the past 30 years, American politics has been dominated by a conservative movement determined to undermine the New Deal's achievements. Now, the tide may be turning, and in The Conscience of a Liberal Paul Krugman, the world's most widely read economist and one of its most influential political commentators, charts the way to reform.
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Great Book!!!
- By carl801 on 12-04-07
By: Paul Krugman
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Democracy Incorporated
- Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
- By: Sheldon S. Wolin
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"? Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive - and where elites are eager to keep them that way.
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Essential listening....
- By M. Levine on 02-25-11
By: Sheldon S. Wolin
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The Post-American World 2.0
- By: Fareed Zakaria
- Narrated by: Fareed Zakaria
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
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Here is the New York Times and international best seller, revised and expanded with a new afterword. This is the essential update of Fareed Zakaria's analysis about America and its shifting position in world affairs. In this new edition, Zakaria makes sense of the rapidly changing global landscape. With his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination, he draws on lessons from the two great power shifts of the past 500 years - the rise of the Western world and the rise of the United States - to tell us what we can expect from the third shift, the rise of the rest.
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S/B req reading for every man, woman and child...
- By Kopernicus on 10-20-11
By: Fareed Zakaria
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Refuge
- Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World
- By: Paul Collier, Alexander Betts
- Narrated by: Clive Chafer
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Refuge seeks to restore moral purpose and clarity to refugee policy. Rather than assuming indefinite dependency, Collier - author of The Bottom Billion - and his Oxford colleague Betts propose a humanitarian approach integrated with a new economic agenda that begins with jobs, restores autonomy, and rebuilds people's ability to help themselves and their societies.
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Academic
- By Jonah on 09-30-19
By: Paul Collier, and others
What listeners say about The Fractured Republic
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- Anonymous User
- 05-19-23
How to de fracture a republic
The Author goes into detail on how a diffusion of powers from the national government to state and local levels, the removal of nostalgia from politics, as well as the reinvigoration of common communal concerns and values will help our republic survive in a new age.
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- J. Bickett
- 01-09-17
Make Subsidiary Great Again
A strong challenge to the left/right conception of individualism and each sides sclorodic policy adgenda. narration could be better, but still a worthwhile listen.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Samuel K Osborne
- 01-03-17
A cure for what ails 'U.S.'
What made the experience of listening to The Fractured Republic the most enjoyable?
Levin's diagnosis of our political and social disfunction being the result of Baby Boomer nostalgia for the exceptional post-WWII, mid-century decades and the centralized, consolidated consensus which seemed to serve as the underpinning of our collective prosperity and political comity is spot on. Despite his conservative biases, he admits to them and offers an evan-handed analysis of both sides: conservatives long for the moral consensus and social cohesion of the post-war period as well as the economic deregulation and religious right retrenchment championed by Reagan in 1981; liberals long for the corporatism, industrial policy, and social welfare programs of the New Deal days which reached their high-water mark under Johnson's Great Society in 1965. The cultural, social, corporate, and political consolidation and uniformity which allowed for both partisan platforms to exist has disintegrated. Levin argues for both sides to draw upon their historic political traditions (read Levin's previous work "The Great Debate" for an engaging primer on the early rift of Anglo-American liberalism between Burke's conservatism and Payne's progressivism for a greater fleshing out of these ideas) to navigate a new course which Levin terms subsidiarity: strengthening the mediating institutions standing between the autonomous individual and the State (families, religious congregations, civic organizations, charities, neighborhoods, local communities, etc.) which can better address the pressing social, cultural, and economic challenges and ameliorate their deleterious effects more effectively and efficiently. Levin makes the point that conservatives, though themselves beholden to their own brand of nostalgia, are closer to embracing subsidiarity than are Progressives who are increasingly enamored with Statism. Chapter 7 (in the audiobook) is my favorite section, although the entire volume is deserving of every thoughtful citizens earnest consideration.
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- Alex Brik
- 09-13-23
Some good ideas.
Mr. Levin makes several good observations, such as that about hollowing of the middling social structures and institutiins. Overall, however, I found the book unconvincing.
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- Raylan Givens
- 12-01-16
Excellent book with unbearable narration
The book outlined a great theory of where our country is heading politically. Well supported if not a little biased (something the author acknowledges right up front). The big issue was the narration. It was halting, adding pauses mid sentence which threw off comprehension of the sentence as a whole. The narrator seemed more concerned with the pronunciation of each individual word (you will hate hearing the word "diffusion" after this book) than with the concepts the book is trying to get across.
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2 people found this helpful
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- surya
- 05-12-17
Begins with a bang but deteriorates
The first half is informational regarding how we ended up where we are. The second half is bunch of new age libertarian ideology propaganda.
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- Donr
- 02-12-21
hmmm
not a ton of substance. plenty of conjecture. would not choose it had I known
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1 person found this helpful
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- isaiah
- 09-29-16
Started out strong but finished weak
The beginning of this book was good when dealing with the domination of American politics by using the lives of baby boomers as the yardstick. That part was very insightful. The drop off came when he started talking about ways to improve our dysfunctional parts of society. He basically went to the conservative well and repeated all of the traditional things we've heard for the past 40 years. He wants to limit the scope of the federal government, empower local institutions, create a market driven approach to entitlements... if you're reading this, you already know the standard conservative boilerplate.
I understand the book was mostly written before this election. The fact that Trump is the republican nominee shows the weakness of true conservatives. He also doesn't deal with the fact that the republicans are becoming the party of only white people. How can that possibly make for a winning future coalition? I'm not impressed by the second half at all.
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3 people found this helpful