THE GROUNDBREAKING BESTSELLER, is back in print! Widely recognized as the most powerful and complete critique of the war against the family presently taking place in Western democracies. Inspired by his own passionate experience as a son, husband, and father, Gairdner offers in this book a forum for a long-overdue debate about the future of the family in Western civilization. Gairdner traces the war against the family to an egalitarian ideology that begins with Plato and survives today as a utopian liberalism that has become a caricature of itself, everywhere promoting the equality and rights of individuals, but ignoring their duties and obligations. Driven by its devotion to egalitarianism and the promise of what can only be a morally and socially irresponsible form of "freedom," the modern state effectively weakens all of society, of which the traditional the family unit is the most important element. So constituted, the modern democratic state is driven to target the family unit as a bastion of privacy, privilege, and moral authority at odds with the state's own secular and egalitarian motives. Hence, the war against the family. All those who are concerned about the direction of modern life and the country they are leaving for future generations are sure to benefit from this cri de coeur written by a man of deep experience and searing insight.