Review of 'American Covenant' by Yuval Levin
Speaking at the Democratic National Convention in August, United States Olympic basketball coach Steve Kerr waxed poetic about a motif common to politics and sports: unity. After describing how proud he was to lead the national team to gold just weeks before, he implored the United Center crowd to reject the divisive forces of political life. “Think about what our team achieved with 12 Americans in Paris putting aside rivalries to represent our country,” Kerr said. “Now imagine what we could do with all 330 million of us playing on the same team—not as Democrats, not as Republicans, not as Libertarians, but as Americans.”
It’s an unobjectionable thought, the kind you hear seven days a week and twice a day during election season: We Americans are so divided. We can’t agree on anything. We need national unity. But what does this nice-sounding thing called unity actually mean?
Some doubtless think unity means something like civility, and the two are indeed related. When we view each other as part of a shared enterprise, we are less likely to demonize our fellow citizens and treat them with contempt. And at a high level of generality, unity can mean simply recognizing that we all want what’s best for America.
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Tal Fortgang is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He was a 2023 Sapir
Fellow.
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