Yuval Levin on What Conservatism Is for Today

Conversations with Coleman · Mar 2, 2026 · 1h 2m

What does conservatism mean in an age of populism, executive power, and institutional distrust? Yuval Levin is a political theorist, the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again. Today he argues that the deepest divide in American politics is no longer left versus right, but populism versus institutions. Levin traces the shift within the conservative movement from an emphasis on morality and constitutional limits to a more confrontational style of…