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Slouching Towards Gomorrah Modern Liberalism and American Decline
400 pages, Audible Audio
Published June 1, 1996
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About the author
Robert H. Bork
214 books42 followersRobert Heron Bork was an American legal scholar who advocated the judicial philosophy of originalism. Bork served as a Yale Law School professor, Solicitor General, Acting Attorney General, and a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In 1987, he was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan, but the Senate rejected his nomination. Bork had more success as an antitrust scholar, where his once-idiosyncratic view that antitrust law should focus on maximizing consumer welfare has come to dominate American legal thinking on the subject.
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October 10, 2023
AN INDICTMENT OF ‘LIBERALISM,’ FEMINISM, MULTICULTURALISM, AND MORE
Author Robert H. Bork wrote in the Introduction to this 1996 book, “This is a book about American decline. Since American culture is a variant of the cultures of all Western industrialized democracies, it may even, inadvertently, be a book about Western decline. In the United States, as least, that decline and the mounting resistance to it have produced what we now call a culture war. It is impossible to say that the outcome will be, but for the moment our trajectory continues downward. This is not to deny that much in our culture remains healthy, that many families are intact and continue to raise children with strong moral values. American culture is complex and resilient. But it is also not to be denied that there are aspects of almost every branch of our culture that are worse than ever before and that the rot is spreading.” (Pg. 2)
He continues, “there is currently a widespread sense that the distinctive virtues of American life, indeed the distinctive features of Western civilization, are in peril in ways not previously seen… The enemy within is modern liberalism, a corrosive agent carrying a very different mood and agenda than that of classical or traditional liberalism. That the modern variety is intellectually bankrupt diminishes neither its vitality nor the danger it poses… So long as [liberalism] was tempered by opposing authorities and traditions, it was a splendid idea. It is the collapse of those tempering forces that has brought us to a triumphant modern liberalism with all the cultural and social degradation that follows in its wake… the defining characteristics of modern liberalism are radical egalitarianism (the equality of outcomes rather than of opportunities) and radical individualism (the drastic reduction of limits to personal gratification)…” (Pg. 4-5)
He goes on, “Modern liberalism is powerful because it has enlisted our cultural elites, those who man the institutions that manufacture, manipulate, and disseminate ideas, attitudes, and symbols---universities, churches, Hollywood, the national press… foundation staffs, the ‘public interest’ organizations… including, all too often, a majority of the Supreme Court. This, it must be stressed, is not a conspiracy but a syndrome. These are institutions controlled by people who view the world from a common perspective, a perspective not generally shared by the public at large. But so pervasive is the influence of those who occupy the commanding heights of our culture that it is important to understand what modern liberalism is and what its ascendancy means. That is what this book attempts to explain.” (Pg. 7) He adds, “This book will examine the changes wrought by liberalism in a variety of seemingly disparate areas of life, from popular entertainment to religion to scholarship to constitutional law, from abortion to crime to feminism, and more. It will attempt to answer where modern liberalism came from and why its ideas are pressed so immoderately.” (Pg. 12-13)
He asserts, “The generation that fought in Korea had not grown up with affluence… The middle-class youths who were asked to fight in Vietnam were of a pampered generation, one that prized personal convenience above almost all else. The prospect that their comfortable lives might be disrupted, or even endangered, by having to serve their country in Vietnam was for many intolerable… It may or may not have been a mistake to get involved in Vietnam; it was most certainly a mistake, and worse, having gotten involved, not to fight to win.” (Pg. 18, 20)
He states, “The Sixties compounded the problem. An entire generation of students carried a more virulent form of intellectual class attitudes and cynicism about this society into a range of occupations outside the universities…. As the rioting and riotousness died down in the early 1970s… it seemed, at last, that the Sixties were over. They were not… It was a malignant decade that … returned in the 1980s to metastasize more devastatingly throughout our culture than it had in the Sixties… The Sixties radicals are still with us, but now they do not paralyze the universities; they run the universities.” (Pg. 52-53)
He contends, “What then can be the moral basis for objecting to economic inequality and asserting that condemnation of great wealth, backed up with political action, is essential to any defense of the free market? The obvious candidate is envy. It is impossible to see any objective harm done to the less wealthy by another’s greater wealth. It is not, after all, the case that the richer man’s income is extracted from the poorer man.” (Pg. 68) He acknowledges that University of Chicago school of law professors Walter J. Blum and Harry Kalven Jr. “examined the claims of the more wealthy to the income that is taken from them by progressive taxation. There is, they concede, a large amount of ‘undeserved’ income---dur to factors like monopoly, fraud, duress, and chance---but this does establish a case for redistribution…” (Pg. 71)
He explains, “I objected to Roe v. Wade the moment it was decided, not because of any doubts about abortion, but because the decision was a radical deformation of the Constitution. The Constitution has nothing to say about abortion…. Roe is nothing more than the Supreme Court’s imposition on us of the morality of our cultural elites.” (Pg, 173-174) Later, he adds, “Abortion has coarsened us. If it is permissible to kill the unborn human for convenience, it is surely permissible to kill those thought to be soon to dies for the same reason. And it is inevitable that many who are not in danger of imminent death will be killed to reliever their families of burdens. Convenience is becoming the theme of our culture…” (Pg. 192)
He asserts, “Radical feminism is the most destructive and fanatical movement to come down to us from the Sixties. This is a revolutionary, not a reformist, movement, and it is meeting with considerable success. Totalitarian in spirit, it is deeply antagonistic to traditional Western culture and proposed the complete restructuring of society, morality, and human nature.” (Pg. 193) Later, he adds, “Male faculty also feel the lash of feminist anger. The use of ‘insensitive’ language in the classroom often results in formal complaints being filed, followed by a hearing notable for its lack of the rudiments of due process, and then suspension or a requirement of submitting to sensitivity training. Required sensitivity training is a humiliating experience…” (Pg. 215) He also states, “The young women who are lured into women’s studies should be spared what they obtain there: total immersion in a false world view coupled to a fourth-rate education.” (Pg. 217)
He also opines, “Multiculturalism is a lie, or rather a series of lies: the lie that European-American culture is uniquely oppressive; the lie that culture has been formed to preserve the dominance of heterosexual white males; and the lie that other cultures are equal to the culture of the West… American culture is Eurocentric, and it must remain Eurocentric or collapse into meaninglessness… If the legitimacy of Eurocentric standards is denied, there is nothing else… Islam cannot provide standards for us, nor can Africa or the Far East.” (Pg. 311)
He concludes, “If there are signs that we have become less concerned than we should be with virtue, there are also signs that many Americans are becoming … sick of the hedonistic individualism that has brought us to the suburbs of Gomorrah… Our hopes, our struggles, and our optimism must be for the long run. The first requisite is knowing what is happening to us. This book has tried to answer that… The second step is resistance to radical individualism and radical egalitarianism in every area of culture… There is no single grand strategy… Religion must be recaptured church by church; and education, university by university… Perhaps government can stop doing harm by reforming welfare, but it should leave to private institutions the task of redeeming the culture.” (Pg. 342)
Bork was, of course, the one who (in the Watergate era) ultimately fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox [after his superiors resigned rather than follow Nixon’s indefensible order]; Bork’s nomination by Reagan as Supreme Court Justice was rejected by the Senate in a 42-58 vote. (The Senate then confirmed Anthony Kennedy by a unanimous vote.) He then taught at extremely conservative institutions such as George Mason University School of Law, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, the Hudson Institute, and the Ave Maria School of Law.
Author Robert H. Bork wrote in the Introduction to this 1996 book, “This is a book about American decline. Since American culture is a variant of the cultures of all Western industrialized democracies, it may even, inadvertently, be a book about Western decline. In the United States, as least, that decline and the mounting resistance to it have produced what we now call a culture war. It is impossible to say that the outcome will be, but for the moment our trajectory continues downward. This is not to deny that much in our culture remains healthy, that many families are intact and continue to raise children with strong moral values. American culture is complex and resilient. But it is also not to be denied that there are aspects of almost every branch of our culture that are worse than ever before and that the rot is spreading.” (Pg. 2)
He continues, “there is currently a widespread sense that the distinctive virtues of American life, indeed the distinctive features of Western civilization, are in peril in ways not previously seen… The enemy within is modern liberalism, a corrosive agent carrying a very different mood and agenda than that of classical or traditional liberalism. That the modern variety is intellectually bankrupt diminishes neither its vitality nor the danger it poses… So long as [liberalism] was tempered by opposing authorities and traditions, it was a splendid idea. It is the collapse of those tempering forces that has brought us to a triumphant modern liberalism with all the cultural and social degradation that follows in its wake… the defining characteristics of modern liberalism are radical egalitarianism (the equality of outcomes rather than of opportunities) and radical individualism (the drastic reduction of limits to personal gratification)…” (Pg. 4-5)
He goes on, “Modern liberalism is powerful because it has enlisted our cultural elites, those who man the institutions that manufacture, manipulate, and disseminate ideas, attitudes, and symbols---universities, churches, Hollywood, the national press… foundation staffs, the ‘public interest’ organizations… including, all too often, a majority of the Supreme Court. This, it must be stressed, is not a conspiracy but a syndrome. These are institutions controlled by people who view the world from a common perspective, a perspective not generally shared by the public at large. But so pervasive is the influence of those who occupy the commanding heights of our culture that it is important to understand what modern liberalism is and what its ascendancy means. That is what this book attempts to explain.” (Pg. 7) He adds, “This book will examine the changes wrought by liberalism in a variety of seemingly disparate areas of life, from popular entertainment to religion to scholarship to constitutional law, from abortion to crime to feminism, and more. It will attempt to answer where modern liberalism came from and why its ideas are pressed so immoderately.” (Pg. 12-13)
He asserts, “The generation that fought in Korea had not grown up with affluence… The middle-class youths who were asked to fight in Vietnam were of a pampered generation, one that prized personal convenience above almost all else. The prospect that their comfortable lives might be disrupted, or even endangered, by having to serve their country in Vietnam was for many intolerable… It may or may not have been a mistake to get involved in Vietnam; it was most certainly a mistake, and worse, having gotten involved, not to fight to win.” (Pg. 18, 20)
He states, “The Sixties compounded the problem. An entire generation of students carried a more virulent form of intellectual class attitudes and cynicism about this society into a range of occupations outside the universities…. As the rioting and riotousness died down in the early 1970s… it seemed, at last, that the Sixties were over. They were not… It was a malignant decade that … returned in the 1980s to metastasize more devastatingly throughout our culture than it had in the Sixties… The Sixties radicals are still with us, but now they do not paralyze the universities; they run the universities.” (Pg. 52-53)
He contends, “What then can be the moral basis for objecting to economic inequality and asserting that condemnation of great wealth, backed up with political action, is essential to any defense of the free market? The obvious candidate is envy. It is impossible to see any objective harm done to the less wealthy by another’s greater wealth. It is not, after all, the case that the richer man’s income is extracted from the poorer man.” (Pg. 68) He acknowledges that University of Chicago school of law professors Walter J. Blum and Harry Kalven Jr. “examined the claims of the more wealthy to the income that is taken from them by progressive taxation. There is, they concede, a large amount of ‘undeserved’ income---dur to factors like monopoly, fraud, duress, and chance---but this does establish a case for redistribution…” (Pg. 71)
He explains, “I objected to Roe v. Wade the moment it was decided, not because of any doubts about abortion, but because the decision was a radical deformation of the Constitution. The Constitution has nothing to say about abortion…. Roe is nothing more than the Supreme Court’s imposition on us of the morality of our cultural elites.” (Pg, 173-174) Later, he adds, “Abortion has coarsened us. If it is permissible to kill the unborn human for convenience, it is surely permissible to kill those thought to be soon to dies for the same reason. And it is inevitable that many who are not in danger of imminent death will be killed to reliever their families of burdens. Convenience is becoming the theme of our culture…” (Pg. 192)
He asserts, “Radical feminism is the most destructive and fanatical movement to come down to us from the Sixties. This is a revolutionary, not a reformist, movement, and it is meeting with considerable success. Totalitarian in spirit, it is deeply antagonistic to traditional Western culture and proposed the complete restructuring of society, morality, and human nature.” (Pg. 193) Later, he adds, “Male faculty also feel the lash of feminist anger. The use of ‘insensitive’ language in the classroom often results in formal complaints being filed, followed by a hearing notable for its lack of the rudiments of due process, and then suspension or a requirement of submitting to sensitivity training. Required sensitivity training is a humiliating experience…” (Pg. 215) He also states, “The young women who are lured into women’s studies should be spared what they obtain there: total immersion in a false world view coupled to a fourth-rate education.” (Pg. 217)
He also opines, “Multiculturalism is a lie, or rather a series of lies: the lie that European-American culture is uniquely oppressive; the lie that culture has been formed to preserve the dominance of heterosexual white males; and the lie that other cultures are equal to the culture of the West… American culture is Eurocentric, and it must remain Eurocentric or collapse into meaninglessness… If the legitimacy of Eurocentric standards is denied, there is nothing else… Islam cannot provide standards for us, nor can Africa or the Far East.” (Pg. 311)
He concludes, “If there are signs that we have become less concerned than we should be with virtue, there are also signs that many Americans are becoming … sick of the hedonistic individualism that has brought us to the suburbs of Gomorrah… Our hopes, our struggles, and our optimism must be for the long run. The first requisite is knowing what is happening to us. This book has tried to answer that… The second step is resistance to radical individualism and radical egalitarianism in every area of culture… There is no single grand strategy… Religion must be recaptured church by church; and education, university by university… Perhaps government can stop doing harm by reforming welfare, but it should leave to private institutions the task of redeeming the culture.” (Pg. 342)
Bork was, of course, the one who (in the Watergate era) ultimately fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox [after his superiors resigned rather than follow Nixon’s indefensible order]; Bork’s nomination by Reagan as Supreme Court Justice was rejected by the Senate in a 42-58 vote. (The Senate then confirmed Anthony Kennedy by a unanimous vote.) He then taught at extremely conservative institutions such as George Mason University School of Law, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, the Hudson Institute, and the Ave Maria School of Law.
March 19, 2025
Written in 1996 but incredibly relevant to date. The vast majority of the book reads as if it could have been written in the past 5 years or as if Robert Bork had a glimpse into the future. Of course that is what can happen if you are using sound reasoning and correct assessments of your times.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews