"Brilliant . . . Should be required reading." --Commentary
"As a critic of liberalism, George is devastating." --National Review
"Puts George's highly burnished philosophical and constitutional learning on full display . . . George speaks for a sizable number of conscientious objectors to America's ruling liberal secularism." --New York Times Book Review
"Could not be more timely. A treasure trove of thought-provoking reflections by one of the best minds of our time." --Mary Ann Glendon, Harvard Law, from the foreword to the updated and expanded paperback edition of Conscience and Its Enemies
Assaults on religious liberty and traditional morality are growing fiercer. Here, at last, is the counterattack.
This revised and updated paperback edition of the acclaimed Conscience and Its Enemies showcases the talents that have made Robert P. George one of America's most influential thinkers. Here George explodes the myth that the secular elite represents the voice of reason. In fact, it is on the elite side of the cultural divide where the prevailing views are little more than articles of faith. Conscience and Its Enemies reveals the bankruptcy of these too often smugly held orthodoxies while presenting powerfully reasoned arguments for classical virtues.
In defending what James Madison called the "sacred rights of conscience"--rights for which government shows frightening contempt--George grapples with today's most controversial issues: same-sex marriage, abortion, transgenderism, genetic manipulation, euthanasia and assisted suicide, religion in politics, judicial activism, and more. His brilliantly argued essays rely not on theological claims or religious authority but on established scientific facts and a philosophical tradition that extends back to Plato and Aristotle.
Conscience and Its Enemies sets forth powerful arguments that secular liberals are unaccustomed to hearing--and that embattled defenders of traditional morality so often fail to marshal.
About the Author: Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University. He has received the Presidential Citizens Medal, the Bradley Prize for Intellectual and Civic Achievement, and the Canterbury Medal of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. He is chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom and has served on the President's Council on Bioethics and the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Professor George holds degrees from Swarthmore, Harvard, and Oxford, as well as many honorary degrees. A regular guest on television and radio and a frequent contributor to popular and scholarly publications, he is the author of The Clash of Orthodoxies and coauthor of What Is Marriage? and Embryo: A Defense of Human Life.