Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline [Paperback]

Robert H. Bork (Author)

Book Description

Release date: December 16, 2003

In this New York Times bestselling book, Robert H. Bork, our country's most distinguished conservative scholar, offers a prophetic and unprecedented view of a culture in decline, a nation in such serious moral trouble that its very foundation is crumbling: a nation that slouches not towards the Bethlehem envisioned by the poet Yeats in 1919, but towards Gomorrah.

Slouching Towards Gomorrah is a penetrating, devastatingly insightful exposé of a country in crisis at the end of the millennium, where the rise of modern liberalism, which stresses the dual forces of radical egalitarianism (the equality of outcomes rather than opportunities) and radical individualism (the drastic reduction of limits to personal gratification), has undermined our culture, our intellect, and our morality.

In a new Afterword, the author highlights recent disturbing trends in our laws and society, with special attention to matters of sex and censorship, race relations, and the relentless erosion of American moral values. The alarm he sounds is more sobering than ever: we can accept our fate and try to insulate ourselves from the effects of a degenerating culture, or we can choose to halt the beast, to oppose modern liberalism in every arena. The will to resist, he warns, remains our only hope.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Robert Bork will go down as one of history's footnotes. Nominated to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan in 1987, he was voted down by the Senate following a no-holds barred confirmation fight. Almost a decade later, he returns to reopen old wounds with Slouching towards Gomorrah, an extended attack against everything liberal. From pop culture and our universities to the church (Protestant and Roman Catholic) and the Supreme Court--the very institution he once fought so hard to join--Bork finds fault wherever he looks. This is a bitter book from a passionate man who has very little good to say about the world he lives in. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Controversial former federal court judge Bork (The Tempting of America) has produced a wide-ranging but turgid jeremiad, citing mostly familiar, conservative explanations for American decline. Thus he attacks multiculturalism, racial and sexual politics, the Supreme Court and the criminal justice and welfare systems, among others, often relying on the work of critics such as Charles Murray, Thomas Sowell, Richard Bernstein and Christopher Lasch. Bork's tone can be overwrought: "[M]odern liberalism... is what fascism looks like when it has captured significant institutions, most notably the universities." He also offers a knee-jerk condemnation of rock and rap. Despite such verbiage, Bork does strike a chord with his criticisms that individualism and egalitarianism have loosened social ties and weakened America, and with his warnings that recent decisions on assisted suicide may have broad, Roe v. Wade-like implications. Several arguments should spur debate. Bork disagrees with those who call for greater economic equality?"it is not that America is odd compared to Sweden, but that Sweden is odd compared to us." He believes that constitutional legitimacy can only be reclaimed if we pass a constitutional amendment allowing Congress to override federal and state court decisions. He also supports censorship of "the most violent and sexually explicit material," though he doesn't suggest how it might be implemented. Bork finds some hope in the rise of religious conservatism, and proposes a multiple-front strategy to reclaim American institutions. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; Rep Sub edition (December 16, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060573112
• ISBN-13: 978-0060573119
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (167 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #43,957 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #65 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > United States > National

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

102 of 120 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Bork's incisive explication of our society's decline. February 23, 1997

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

"I use to call him 'Dork'," said a Liberal friend of mine recently. I patiently replied, "Ha, ha. I used to call him 'Railroaded'." He knew exactly what I was talking about--the 1987 confirmation hearing of Robert Bork before the Senate Judiary Committee. This confirmation hearing was very instructive to many of us--if you actually think that the Constitution of the United States has anything to do with Constitutional Law, don't bother looking for a job on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here in Slouching Towards Gomorrah Bork, in taking some well-earned and enlightening revenge, continues the incisive and dead-on analysis of his subject which he exhibited in The Tempting of America, his book about Constitutional Law, judicial activism, and the Court's hijacking of our country.

Bork's thesis here is this: Modern America has been infected and weakened by two main currents embraced and perpetuated by Liberalism, (1) radical egalitarianism and (2) radical individualism. Interestingly, he doesn't just place the locus embryonicus for these intellectual and cultural viruses in the 1960s, although he certainly traces their major gestation period to that decade. Rather, Bork points out the historical and fairly old occurences of these maladies. He gets to the very seeds of these currents which germinate and blossom on the scene in the early 1960s.

Well, the radical egalitarianism that Bork identifies perfectly is not an egalitarianism which stems from Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence, and Lincoln, but the egalitarianism that says that everybody, darn it, is going to be equal, or else. People should not be allowed to make too much money, or own too many things, or be too successful in this world.... Hence this brand of equality leads, necessarily and logically, to government coercion, meddling, and refereeing. Further, then, argues Bork, this leads to an expanding Federal Government which, with the ample help of the activists courts, has taken over almost every meaningful aspect of our lives in the effort to level everyone in the name of equality and justice.

Radical individualism, again to be distinguished from generic individualism, also to be found in our formational and fundamental documents, is the kind that recognizes no standards in any area of personal behavior, except, of course, where the government deems that equality is more important. It is this radical individualism that will accept no standards, except those thought up, or felt, by the individual, that wants government out of peoples' business. It is the acceptance, actually, of nihilism--that cuddly ol' deathwish germinated in Nietzsche's brain about a century ago. This nihilism has led to the problems of divorce, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, pornography, and just about any other malady that continues to tear the fabric of this country apart.

Bork certainly presents us with an analysis of our cutlural and intellectual diseases that must make his detractors, and his admirers, think long and hard about our practices, ideas, and assumptions. The long road to reform has to start with the proper intellectual framework. Once this is accented to it will be a matter of will and determination to ensure that we "leap away from Gomorrah." Read more ›

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow, how long ago was this book written? August 24, 2011

By Steinbeck23

Format:Paperback

I read this book 12 or 15 years ago and believed it to be thought provoking but somewhat disturbing, depressing and somewhat incredulous. I reread it recently and realized how accurate and insightful Bork was and is. Too bad for us, too bad for freedom's future, too bad for creativity, too bad for free enterprise, small business, traditional American values and the American Dream. My, how far we have fallen. How are we going to get back up? What kind of a future are our children going to live in 20 or 30 years from now if we don't?

51 of 61 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Describes Impact of Traditional Liberalism Turned Radical December 5, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Judge Bork does a superb job of describing the various elements of destruction that have arisen from the application of modern liberalism to American society. He also offers best and worst case scenarios for the future of the Republic if the current trends continue.

Bork makes it clear that he speaks not of the traditional liberalism exercised by the Founding Fathers but rather an ideological departure from that tradition that has hijacked and bastardized the name.

The modern form of liberalism consists of radical egalitarianism, which inherently requires a coercive State. It also consists of a radical individualism that corrodes institutions of restraint (i.e. family, religion, etc.) eventually leading to a free-for-all that will require the strong hand of government to contain. The centrality and powerfulness of the State in modern liberalism is its most radical departure from traditional liberalism.

Bork does not deride the successes and accomplishment of liberalism when it still possessed the goals and intentions compatible with its tradition - e.g. civil rights for minorities, suffrage for women, etc. However, it quickly evolved into an entirely different beast in the mid-to-late 1960s and has never looked back. The fact that there are currently forty professed Socialists in the U.S. House of Representatives (all Democrat) is testimony to the extreme left-turn taken by those calling themselves liberal today.

Bork does deride the goals, intentions, and actions of this new breed of liberal. It is virulently anti-American and anti-Western Civilization. As it has with the term "liberalism," the modern liberal has hijacked worthy causes (e.g. civil rights) and has politicized them in order to advance their radical agenda.... Modern liberalism wishes to rob America of its unique heritage and to replace it with a revolutionary concept of human nature and human governance.

Bork goes through the various components of society where modern liberalism has left the mark of its poison - crime, illegitimacy, welfare, abortion, assisted suicide, sex (feminism), race (racial-preferences), ethnicity (multi-culturalism), education (anti-intellectualism, post-modernism), religion, etc. While Bork is careful not to place the blame entirely on the 1960s radicals, he does point out that they were the climax of an ideological swing.

The 1960s radicals are now tenured professors and hold other positions of leadership and influence. They may no longer be assaulting police officers and burning buildings, but they continue to spread their poison in institutions of higher learning, government bureaucracies, think-tanks, and on the judicial bench. The impact of their influence permeates throughout society and is manifest especially on college campuses where the students of radical professors carry the torch of anti-Americanism, anti-Europeans, anti-capitalism, anti-Western Culture, anti-white, anti-male, etc.

Bork makes it clear that continuing down the current path can only spell disaster for America's future - where inter-racial, inter-gender, inter-ethnic antagonism reaches a peak of resentment and hostility leading to the breakdown of civil order.

Perhaps this is what modern liberals want - a revolution to remake America in their own image and dispense with its entire heritage. But this is clearly not what most Americans want, which leads to Bork's point that the liberal radicals are a small minority of élites that have an impact totally out of proportion to their numbers.

Bork offers several options for reversing the trend towards social implosion. However, he quickly reduces the choices to one that focuses on the re-assertion of institutions of order and virtue - family and religion. It is only by reviving these institutions that there may be any hope of taking the momentum out of the modern liberal onslaught. While Bork does sense a glimmer of hope in this approach, he wonders whether such an approach may merely slow the onslaught that will eventually end in the disintegration of our society and culture.

This book is an absolute eye-opener to what damage has already been wrought by modern liberalism. If there is any chance at all of taming and turning back the beast, the first step is to "know thy enemy." This book serves that purpose. Hence, I recommend it to every freedom-loving American. Obviously, most liberals won't like what Bork has to say, but I think most people calling themselves liberals today have no idea what some are doing under that label. Therefore, I recommend this book to liberals as well so that they can read for themselves what liberal radicals have done and are doing to undermine American culture and society. Read more ›

24 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Legal scholar shows roots of American cultural decline. January 8, 1997

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Despite Robert Bork's upopularity in mainstream America, this seasoned observer
and legal scholar offers a healthy dose of common sense regarding the moral and cultural
decline of America. Moreover, he proposes workable solutions to the problems he elucidates.

Bork, whose name became a household word when his nomination to the U.S. Supreme court was
vigorously (and successfully) opposed by the far-left in American politics, nonetheless hits
a nerve in SLOUCHING TOWARDS GOMORRAH. He pointedly shows that the roots of our current
cultural problems are deep in 1960s radicalism. While many believe that the 60s radicals have
disappeared, Bork observes, he asserts that this is far from accurate. Indeed, those who launched
protests at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago and who took over college campuses to show their
angst over various injustices, are still alive and well, and in charge of many of our educational,
cultural and political institutions.

Perhaps the best example of Bork's premise is Bill Clinton, whom he saliently observes to be
the quintessential baby-boomer radical who has grown up and risen to a position of great power with
his philosophies essentially unchanged.

Bork's well-written and thoroughly researched work is a tour de force of the rapidly decaying
culture of the United States, and will prove to be thought-provoking even for those who disagree
with the author and his beliefs. I heartily recommend this volume.