Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism (American Ideals & Institutions)

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.

Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University. He has received the Presidential Citizens Medal, the Bradley Prize for Intellectual and Civil Achievement, and trhe Canterbury Medal of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. He chairs the U.S. Commission of International Religious Freedom and has served on the President's Council on Bioethics. Professor George holds degrees from Swarthmore, Harvard, and Oxford.