Patrick Deneen's recent book, WHY LIBERALISM FAILED, looks at two different views of liberty. One (the traditional definition) says that we must have the self-discipline to control our baser instincts and drives. If we do we are liberated from them and are morally free. The more recent definition ultimately sees liberty as equivalent to license—the freedom to do anything we please. This does not free us; it ensnares and constrains us and leads to a life of alienation and emptiness in which we are, essentially, enslaved. That is where we are now, living the cultural life encouraged by the 60's ('if it feels good, do it'). Judge Bork was there a generation earlier; the emptiness which follows license is only one of his subjects.
Judge Bork terms this phenomenon 'radical individualism'—the individual is freed from institutional constraints (as the 60's wished) but is nonetheless unhappy. He pairs this with 'radical egalitarianism', the notion that everyone should experience equality of result, regardless of personal gifts, inclinations or labors. Just as promiscuous sex and unbridled drug use lead to emptiness, the government's efforts to achieve equality of result do not work. We sort into hierarchies nonetheless, with the bureaucratic and 'intellectual' elites controlling us as we see standards lowered everywhere in order to achieve equality of result that looks more like lowest-common-denominator misery rather than universal happiness.
The cause of our current malaise and the reason why we are slouching towards Gomorrah is that the 60's won the cultural wars and the 'march through the institutions' advocated by the radical leftist Frankfurt School has been completed. Our educational institutions are in ruins; our churches are complicit in the near-total erosion of their previous authority; the courts (particularly the Supreme Court) make law that would never pass muster in the legislative process; the press (always biased to a noticeable degree) now lacks all credibility and the 'entertainment' industry provides mindless nonsense as well as pornography. The nuclear family (or what's left of it) remains under constant attack.
Although he does not discuss this at great length, the principal culprit for our situation is the comfortable life provided by our economic system. We can afford to be soft, needy, self-indulgent, spoiled and indolent because our biggest challenge is not the need for food, clothing and shelter but rather the battery life of our newest entertainment device.
Many individuals have argued these points, but few so eloquently as Judge Bork. This is a substantial book of 400+ pages. Considering the fact that he had significant day jobs in the law, this is a very impressive book of cultural history. Its principal strengths come from his knowledge, his wit, his refusal to pull punches and the clarity with which he sees our problems.
Unfortunately, he is unable to suggest solutions to our plight beyond three that are unlikely and, in the case of two of them, highly undesirable: a major world war, a massive economic depression and a religious revival.
Losing the opportunity to have him on the Supreme Court did not help our cultural cause.
Bottom line: this is essential reading for anyone concerned with our cultural condition and anxious to learn more concerning its etiology.
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