I would venture to say it is the predominant view of the elite of our culture. Prominent in europe as well which has become very secular. It embraces ideas about liberty and personality to the nature of human beings that are distinctive socially liberal views lifeanddeath issues generally identity issues the spectrum of socalled hot button morally charged issues in our culture. That is a view that i am writing the book against kemal i hope respectfully because it is a view that has very credible supporters and i want to do them the justice that they deserve. They put forward arguments. I want to put forward counterarguments have gone i have found that secular liberal views are so widespread as to go largely unquestioned. As a result many yields to the the temptation to believe that anyone who disagrees with them is a big it all religious fundamentalist. Reason and science they confidently believe on their side. Guest that is me have on anything you want to add to that . Guest i think i said what i want to say there. A happy to defend it. It is dominant in the elite sector of the culture. Divided. Popular opinion different from elite opinion. By definition elite opinion is more. He caught the spirit of that when he talked about his preference for being governed by the 1st 800 names in the boston Telephone Directory rather than the harvard faculty. He faculty. He was recognizing the range of morally important issues if you ask 800 people in the boston from book were in the Trenton New Jersey from book the lynchburg, Virginia Fund but for their opinion about abortion, marriage, affirmative action , capitol punishment, you name it youll get an answer very different from that you would get if you asked 800 people from a major professional association of the journalistic establishment our university professors. After one what are your three pillars . Guest respect for a person and his fundamental dignity. In a Decent Society human beings individuals will not be regarded as means to larger ends, social ends going beyond. They will not be cards in a collectivist will but rather we will be the ends for which other things including the great institutions of law and the economy and the political system our means. The view that persons are what ultimately matter and persons have a unique, inherent, profound, and equal dignity. That is for the sake of which, for the sake of that we want there to be a productive economy a fair legal system a political system that respects peoples basic rights and gives them the right to what we call democracy. The 2nd pillar is the institution of the family. The fundamental unit of society based on the marital bond that brings people into the world and gives people theyre fundamental care and nurturing and education, at least until they reach for 16 or 18 or 21 years of their lives. I think we go astray we try to substitute state run operations for the family. The family in my view is the original department of health, education command welfare. It does better than any other institution can the fundamental job of delivering services and transmitting to each knew generation the virtues the resources, the traits of character and understandings to be good citizens to be good people. All the other institutions of society, economy, Political Society economy, political system, legal system, depend on there being a fairly large number of people who are decent, honorable hardworking who will obey the law not because they fear punishment for because they believe its the right thing to do, they obey out of conscience. And those institutions cannot produce such people. People. Business firms the employees are honest, managers who will be responsible purchasers of goods and services who will pay the bills but they cant produce such people. People. They produce the virtues that enable them to draw on the pool of hardworking, honest employees, managers peers the bills for goods and services. If those people are to exist they have to be produced by another institution. The same the same for the legal system, the political system. They depend on those people most of the time doing the right thing that because they fear detection and punishment but because its the right thing to do. Pres. President obama or bush can simply issue an edict saying there will be virtuous people. People. The Supreme Court can hand are really requiring that people be virtuous. If people are going to have those riches its going to be because they have been brought up in a tradition of virtue by the families. I think family is the 2nd pillar of a a Decent Society, healthy functioning, vibrant family. It is indispensable. Now, such a culture will not be only the family but institutions that support the family and his work for religious is the tuitions, the other institutions of Civil Society to a neighborhood associations unions ethnic clubs fraternal organizations, Civic Associations of every sort boy scouts, campfire girls these sorts of institutions with the fungal assist. Now to say what i have said about the family is not to denigrate the role of government in the state. We cannot get along as a committee of families without any policy. There is there is a fundamental role for the family that cannot be substituted for. When the state steps in to take over the role of the family who will do the best he can, but it will be able to do well what a healthy functioning family can. A 3rd pillar is having a vibrant, productive fair honest with your system and political system one in which peoples fundamental rights including the rights as individual persons to be treated with respect and dignity are observed, honored people are protected against creation from private actors where the government itself restrains itself from interfering where it should not or for violating peoples rights or reducing people to the status of mere means to other hands or cards and machine. When things go haywire what you get is tyranny. Of the of the left of the right, communism, fascism. Where you do not have a fair, efficient system of government pretty soon you will lose his other two pillars of society. These three pillars culture of respect for the individual person and his dignity a vibrant flourishing family culture and a fair and effective system of government are the three pillars of decent. Is the respect of an individuals dignity the same as respect for freedom . And include respect for freedom so i as we understand freedom to be not simply doing whatever you want whenever you want with whomever you want for whatever reason you want at anytime you want. What our founders distinguished as freedom from license respect for peoples honorable liberties, the basic civil liberties, the freedom of speech the free exercise of religion, freedom of the press the basic liberties that we associate with our bill of rights. Equal protection of the laws. The role government is twofold. Also to respect themselves. The job of government is to restrain people from violating each others rights but also to restrain yourself from doing the same thing. Government has to operate within its own limits even as it tries to protect people from other people violating their rights. Often people think of individual rights they think of topical issues such as abortion. Are those individual rights . Its going to be a moral argument in any case. If we want to vindicate a right to freedom of speech we need a moral argument because that is a moral proposition. The idea that people have a right to anything is a moral proposition that need to be defended. We need to identify the reasons for it. There are some people who believe that people have a right to kill themselves or a a right to assistance of others and going themselves right to destroy the life of a child in the womb by abortion. I want to know the argument for that and be able to present the counterargument. I present the counterargument in both those cases. When it comes to family gay marriage gay families are those are those included in the pillar of family in your definition . I think family is the unit based on the conjugal relationship of husband and wife. I criticize the idea that marriage is simply a romantic Sexual Partnership of any two persons of either sex. I dont i dont think that any argument can successfully be made for abandoning a conjugal conception of marriage as a union of husband and wife in favor of you that would recognize marriage as persons of the same sex. By the same token evolving tale as a a matter of principle the three people or four people were five people can be married in a sexual romantic partnership, raise children children together, have a house altogether and so forth. I think i think that if we recognize samesex partnerships as to marriages we abandon the basic idea of marriage lose any principal basis for affirming the traditional norms of marriage such as exclusivity permanence of commitment subjectively people may feel that they want to stick with those norms socially in an open permanent commitment but those will simply be subjective desires, not the principal reason for maintaining those norms. A principal basis would have to be in the idea of marriage is a Conjugal Partnership with the pro creatively oriented union of husband and wife. My argument is that marriage brings together man and woman and as as has been and wife to be father and mother to any children born of that union conferring upon those children the inestimable gift of being brought up in the committed bond of marital love of the two people whose union brought them into being and giving to those children if all goes well and things work out both maternal and paternal influences and care not every marriage will have children but every child while the mother and father. What i think we need to do culturally from a moral. Of view is our best to ensure that as many children as possible are brought up in the bond of the mother and father brought them into being. It cannot always be true and where it is not able to be true where it wont work cant happen because of death or desertion or marital breakup we have ways to deal with that as best we can. Culturally it should be structured to maximize the odds. What is you come up with the title . It is the title of one of the essays. The chapters the chapters are essays ive written over the past eight or ten years addressing a range of topics in constitutional law ethics, political philosophy. The criticism of a report a report by the American College of obstetrics and gynecology which proposed placing strict limits on the ability of physicians nurses and other healthcare workers to decline to participate in abortions and similar procedures that they have moral objections to. That disrespect for conscience is what produced the title for that essay in nasa began the title for the book. John finis was my doctoral supervisor at oxford a professor of law and philosophy regarded as the worlds leading theorist of the tradition of natural law politics and morality that begins with the ancient greeks with plato and aristotle that we find among the roman jurists. Such as cicero which was articulated in the middle ages by st. Thomas aquinas. It it is addressed by some of the reformed and enlightenment thinkers that equate protestant reformers from enlightenment thinkers like john locke and carries on to this day as one of the leading competitors in the field of political philosophy for the role of being the right view, the best you about law and morality and politics in the relationship among them. I learned an enormous amount from him as a student can continue. He is still very active as a scholar. Professor at princeton. What has been your Government Service . I have had three wonderful opportunities to contribute to Government Service. Hazard is a president ial appointee on the United States commission on civil rights. I was appointed on pres. President george h bushs last warning in office. If not midnight appointment i was in an apartment and carried over into president clintons 2nd term. And then in 2002 hours appointed by president george w. Bush. The greatest bioethicist of our time of the university of chicago until he stepped down as chairman and handed the chair over to edmund pellegrino, and other distinguished bioethicist. And then since 2012 i have been serving on of the United States commission on International Religious freedom. That is a bipartisan independent Government Agency in many ways like the Us Commission on civil rights. There are nine of us serving on the commission five democrats, for republican. I was appointed by the speaker of the house and elected by my colleagues. I have served as chairman of the commission. I served as United Nations commission, the World Commission, the World Commission on the ethics of scientific knowledge and technology. The countrys most influential conservative christian thinkers. I am a conservative. I tend not to believe these the New York Times said. Host contemporary conservatism intellectual pinups. Guest glad he said intellectual. I dont think he would want that were omitted. Host you have a blurb from elena kagan. People may be surprised. Guest welcome well, i am to have her endorsement. Is she a friend of yours . Guest were not , but we are friends. I have Great Respect for her, honored that she would say such a nice thing about me. I have never had difficulty having good friendships across ideological lines. I learned from people on the other side. I dont regard them as adversaries. I regard them as friends. I regularly teach in their teaching now with my colleague and dear friend professor cornell west. He sees the world differently than idea. Very much a man of the left. And yet i learned a lot from him. He pays me a compliment of st. You is a lot for me. Our students learn an awful for the engagement that they witnessed. We have a bond that is stronger than what divides us the bond of wanting to get at the truth and wanting to engage with each other with the goal of getting closer to the truth, closer to seeing what is really going on, deepening our understanding of things. If. If i can venture to say so, even to gain some wisdom from our interactions with each other. Very often i find that i have misunderstood a position that he holds because i have not yet heard him make the argument. He he says the same thing about his experience with me he wont he wont understand why a conservative would hold a certain. Of view until he actually hears the argument laid out carefully in a circumstance that is not a formal public debate with someone is trying to win. You are in the informal circumstance of the classroom or perhaps over a glass of wine made at night during the argument in presenting the argument and engaging with each other. I feel the same way. Although she and i disagree about most of the great issues that divide liberals and conservatives in constitutional law she is a person i learned from. Is rejoined class a sellout . We do it as a seminar. We have to restrict it to 18 students. But this format does serve to enable us to engage each other in a very deep and serious way. I dont think we could do what we do with and for each other if we were performing in front of the class of seven or 800 students which i think is what we would get if we turned it into a large undergraduate lecture to a class. We have kept it as a seminar knowing it means that most of the students who would like to participate are not going to be able to. Host something you talk about in your book. As does the Judiciary Branch have too much power . Guest i think it is claimed to much power. Im inclined more toward jefferson and particularly can. The the founders of our nation, the great commentaries on the constitution that were published as arguments for the ratification, we see the judiciary picked it as depicted as the least dangerous branch, the branch that would be weakest and most powerful that would play an Important Role. I i dont think the founders had any conception of the judiciary as powerful as it has turned out to be in our own time. Sometimes they use that power to do good for sometimes bad. What i want to argue for his for every branch each of the three to strictly remain within the limits of their own power and to avoid usurping the authority of the other branches of government and above all to avoid usurping the authority of the democratically constituted American People who are supposed to be sovereign in our constitutional system. Rejecting the idea of judicial supremacy. But we need is constitutional supremacy. That means that all three of the branches are going to have to take responsibility for constitution the constitution. Protecting the scope and limits. Host a chapter called liberal fallacies. Guest im trying to remember. You were supposed to know what you were talking about. The late governor of new york who argued famously at the university of notre dame that is as a catholic and committed prolife person could nevertheless support legal abortion in almost any. In pregnancy and even the public funding of abortion. My argument there was that was strictly straightforward a fallacy. If you believe abortion is something fundamentally wrong, unjust a violation of human rights which would be the only reason you would have for opposing abortion because it is taking the life of a child in the home was a creature of being you accept that is the premise than the logic we will take you to the need for that human being to enjoy the same equal Legal Protections as any other. Now, if you dont accept that premise, if you think that there is nothing wrong with abortion because it is not taking a life where you think that is taking a human life but not the life of the human person because you distinguish human being from person and think that not all human beings are persons and if you take that view when you at least have a logically sound reason for your belief that abortion should be legal and perhaps even publicly funded. Who was. , who was that he had good reasons for being personally prolife but that they were not sufficient to warrant him support the use of public law to protect the right to li