British readers of The Great Debate will not only learn more about their own intellectual heritage, and about the current debate between Left and Right; they will also be introduced to Yuval Levin, himself one of the most gifted young conservative thinkers in America today. The editor of the journal National Affairs, a successor to Irving Kristol's Public Interest, this young man is simultaneously a political philosopher and policy wonk, who is able to explain concisely the deeper questions that lie at the heart of legislative debates. I myself have seen him brilliantly dissect the tedious subject of healthcare policy to a group of mesmerised college students. Today, the American Right is experiencing a great debate between social conservatives and libertarians, realists and internationalists, Washington establishment and Tea Party. Meanwhile, Levin and his circle are devoting serious thought to what a governing conservative-minded party might have to offer America today should it regain the presidency.  

Thus, while at first blush Levin's book might be seen as an abstract analysis of two schools of political thought, in fact it is situated in the unique place in which American political debate finds itself today. During the 2012 election campaign, Barack Obama famously commented on the hypothetical citizen proud of the business he had built that "you didn't build that; someone else made that happen." Republicans gleefully seized on the statement as a gaffe, an indication of his disregard for the American emphasis on individual achievement. One whole day of their convention was dedicated to this theme, thousands in attendance chanting, the resounding refrain "You did build that!"  Those chants fell largely on deaf ears and the election season ended in a defeat. 

A reading of Burke might have reminded Republicans that while government is not the sole source of success, the sustaining structures of faith, family and community are essential to allow the opportunity of individual achievement. American conservatives today, Levin cautions in his conclusion, "are thus too rhetorically strident and far too open to the siren song of hyperindividualsm". Meanwhile, even though the electorate rejected the individualistic rhetoric of the Right, the news is now filled with the failures of the administration's attempt to introduce universal healthcare through governmental mandate — a testament, perhaps, to Levin's point that today's Left grounds its rhetoric in utilitarianism rather thanPaine's natural rights, and therefore lacks a notion of the limitations of government.

What might an American Burkean conservatism — which takes seriously the importance of the situated nature of the human being that reveres tradition, while wary of the danger government can pose to individual liberty — propose for modern policy problems in mediating between liberty and equality, community and individuality, tradition and innovation? If America puts its faith in the political Right again, it is the perceptive mind of Yuval Levin that will help provide the answer.