Bücher von William D. Gairdner

BACK IN PRINT!The Trouble with Democracy shows that the ancient as well as American and Canadian democracies were established on practical social and political grounds vastly different from the strange modern dream of a democracy of autonomous individuals that is now venerated everywhere. Gairdner explains clearly how, in this time of heretofore unimagined wealth and the tax harvesting that it makes possible, warring utopian impulses from deep within our history have combined to produce a form of "hyperdemocracy" never before imagined in all of human history. The result is a comfortable illusion of increased personal freedom that camouflages the reality of pervasive state control in every aspect of modern life. We now live, says Gairdner, under a regime of "libertarian socialism" in which citizens imagine they have all the rights and their governments all the duties. This masterpiece of vigorous, compelling, even prophetic writing represents an exciting turning point in social thought. It challenges citizens to reconsider standard interpretations of democracy and to think much more deeply about the nature, subtlety, and complexity of our actual situation, all the while offering a new and refreshing understanding of the proper nature of a free and civil society.

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.