At this event, AEI scholar Richard Perle and award-winning British columnist Melanie Phillips held an informal discussion of Ms. Phillips's book, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power (Encounter Books, 2010). In this work, Ms. Phillips, author of the acclaimed Londonistan, repudiates the view that faith and reason are incompatible, demonstrating that in many cases the opposite is true. Her central thesis is that the trivialization of religious belief, rejection of the Judeo-Christian heritage, and postmodernism all combine to erode the foundations upon which Western civilization is based. Ms. Phillips explains that this vacuum has resulted in the emergence of a host of irrational cults and preposterous conspiracy theories-a world in which verifiably false statements are continuously reiterated, while truth and lies, right and wrong, victim and aggressor are reversed; a world which may lead Western civilization to a new antirational dark age.