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Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline Paperback – December 16, 2003
by
Robert H. Bork
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Robert H. Bork
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Print length432 pages
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherHarper Perennial
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Publication dateDecember 16, 2003
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Dimensions5.31 x 0.97 x 8 inches
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ISBN-109780060573119
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ISBN-13978-0060573119
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"A brilliant and alarming exploration of the dark side of contemporary American culture."
"A brilliant blend of passionate conviction and sustained arguement. May be the most important book of the '90s."
"Clearly and gracefully written, this humane and well-reasoned analysis . . . invites the respectful attention of liberals and conservatives alike."
"Clearly and gracefully written, this humane and well-reasoned analysis...invites the respectful attention of liberals and conservatives alike."--Eugene D. Genovese, "Washington Post Book World""A brilliant and alarming exploration of the dark side of contemporary American culture. Bork has done an important and good deed."--William J. Bennett, author of "The Book of Virtues "A brilliant blend of passionate conviction and sustained arguement. May be the most important book of the '90s."--Michael Novak, American Enterprise Institute
"A brilliant blend of passionate conviction and sustained arguement. May be the most important book of the '90s."
"Clearly and gracefully written, this humane and well-reasoned analysis . . . invites the respectful attention of liberals and conservatives alike."
"Clearly and gracefully written, this humane and well-reasoned analysis...invites the respectful attention of liberals and conservatives alike."--Eugene D. Genovese, "Washington Post Book World""A brilliant and alarming exploration of the dark side of contemporary American culture. Bork has done an important and good deed."--William J. Bennett, author of "The Book of Virtues "A brilliant blend of passionate conviction and sustained arguement. May be the most important book of the '90s."--Michael Novak, American Enterprise Institute
About the Author
Robert H. Bork has served as Solicitor General and Acting Attorney General of the United States, and as a United States Court of Appeals judge. A former professor of law at Yale Law School, he is currently a professor at Ave Maria School of Law, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the Tad and Dianne Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Also the author of the bestselling The Tempting of America, he lives with his wife in McLean, Virginia.
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Product details
- ASIN : 0060573112
- Publisher : Harper Perennial; Reprint, Subsequent edition (December 16, 2003)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 432 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780060573119
- ISBN-13 : 978-0060573119
- Item Weight : 12.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 0.97 x 8 inches
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#256,360 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #637 in United States National Government
- #812 in Political Conservatism & Liberalism
- #1,636 in Cultural Anthropology (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
Customer reviews
4.8 out of 5 stars
4.8 out of 5
294 global ratings
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Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2019
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The United States would be a better place in which to live had Judge Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court been confirmed. I'm 66 years old ,and reading this book has helped better understand the world in which I came of age. His behind the scenes analysis of 60's campus unrest, racial preferences, the departure(s) from constitutional understanding, and the political promotion by the court of radical sexual behaviors does not disappoint. Let people say what they may about me, and my deplorable friends I now know that at least one if them wasn't a slouch. I read it twice over the course of two years or more because my vocabulary needed maturing.
29 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2020
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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.
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.
15 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2019
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Outstanding book. I had read "Slouching Towards Gomorrah" when it first came out and was very impressed. Reading this a second time, I now realize just how prescient Robert Bork was in his assessment of our culture and its disturbingly downward spiral in recent years. (He really should have been confirmed to the Supreme Court.) I highly recommend this book.
12 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2018
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Excellent book. If you want understand how modern Liberalism moved so far Left and its impact on our culture, this is a "must read."
17 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2017
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Amazing how Judge Bork was able to predict the decline and fall of American values, that resulted from LIBERALISM and the idiocy of its followers.
20 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2019
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I sent this book to my 97-year-old mother who is enjoying it immensely. I wish they printed it in a large print edition so it would be easier for her and other seniors to read.
8 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2016
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Although this was written almost 20 years ago, Robert Bork's analysis of the cultural and moral decay in our country is still timely and spot on. A must read for anyone concerned about the direction in which our nation is going.
16 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2019
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Robert Bork was a very wise man; a genius, really. His tragic flaw was to practice honesty no matter the venue. No one can be honest in a house of smoke, mirrors and liars and hope to survive. America's loss. Pity.
2 people found this helpful
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Greg Gauthier
4.0 out of 5 stars
Prescient, disturbing, and uncanny
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 25, 2019Verified Purchase
This book, even it's 1996 passages, could easily have been written in 2012 or 2013. Everyone points to people like Douglas Murray or Jonathan Haidt as examples of cultural critics ahead of their time, but Robert Bork (and Allan Bloom before him) were warning is in precise detail, what was to come, decades before Haidt or Murray were even graduate students. Bork mentions identity politics, post-modern academics, campus speech policing, and the wholesale adoption of homosexuality in mainstream culture, long before any of this was in anyone's radar. To his credit, his 2004 afterword walks back his defense of censorship, having seen how the left was abandoning its support for the first amendment for political gain, 10 years before anyone else.
It is true, that Bork's attempt at defending intelligent design in this book is weak to the point of silliness (based largely on a layman's reading of Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box), and it's also true that his original defense of censorship is largely based on provoking disgust in the reader, which is a profoundly weak way to make the case. But in both situations, the arguments were not essential to the case made in this book, and did not detract from it. What's more, his piercing, but accessible critiques of constitutional law as interpreted (or not) by the supreme court, reminded me of his work in The Tempting of America, and made reading the whole book well worth the effort.
It is true, that Bork's attempt at defending intelligent design in this book is weak to the point of silliness (based largely on a layman's reading of Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box), and it's also true that his original defense of censorship is largely based on provoking disgust in the reader, which is a profoundly weak way to make the case. But in both situations, the arguments were not essential to the case made in this book, and did not detract from it. What's more, his piercing, but accessible critiques of constitutional law as interpreted (or not) by the supreme court, reminded me of his work in The Tempting of America, and made reading the whole book well worth the effort.
One person found this helpful
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Antony Ivins
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE ROAD TO HELL
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 2, 2015Verified Purchase
This edition of the book contains an Afterword that covers the further deterioration in American culture and politics into the beginning of the new century. The Olympians command the heights and have destroyed any hope of achieving the American Dream.
The book describes the destruction of the cohesion of the United States. To political-elite-watchers this is a preparation for the formation of the North American Union, and eventual ‘global oligarchy’. It should be resisted, but welfare-dependency and rising permanent unemployment is intimidating the activists.
Since the ‘swinging sixties’ the growth of a pornographic culture has replaced the old virtues. “[T]he Church is supposed to evangelize the culture but instead the culture is evangelizing the Church” (Robert Royal). In the United Kingdom the Church of England is guilty of a major dereliction of duty: its priestly ranks are dominated by modern liberal thinkers who have only contempt for the ‘ten Commandments’ and rarely believe the Bible Story. They are not going to throw the money-lenders out of the Temple.
This is a book that describes the ‘new-liberal’ destruction of a culture that is giving acceleration to the people on their downward career on the slippery-slope to Hell.
The book describes the destruction of the cohesion of the United States. To political-elite-watchers this is a preparation for the formation of the North American Union, and eventual ‘global oligarchy’. It should be resisted, but welfare-dependency and rising permanent unemployment is intimidating the activists.
Since the ‘swinging sixties’ the growth of a pornographic culture has replaced the old virtues. “[T]he Church is supposed to evangelize the culture but instead the culture is evangelizing the Church” (Robert Royal). In the United Kingdom the Church of England is guilty of a major dereliction of duty: its priestly ranks are dominated by modern liberal thinkers who have only contempt for the ‘ten Commandments’ and rarely believe the Bible Story. They are not going to throw the money-lenders out of the Temple.
This is a book that describes the ‘new-liberal’ destruction of a culture that is giving acceleration to the people on their downward career on the slippery-slope to Hell.
2 people found this helpful
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S. Andersen
5.0 out of 5 stars
It Needs to Be Said.
Reviewed in Canada on October 16, 2004Verified Purchase
Living as we are in an age where endless liberal spin and rationalizations have clouded our collective judgement, we are fortunate that a voice like judge Bork's speaks to us in clear, unequivocal terms. His observations are passionate but always tempered by reason and logic.
It has been said that in difficult times, the obvious must be stated loudly and clearly. This is Robert Bork's legacy and one that offers hope in the midst of our degenerative social spiral.
It has been said that in difficult times, the obvious must be stated loudly and clearly. This is Robert Bork's legacy and one that offers hope in the midst of our degenerative social spiral.
3 people found this helpful
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Chris
5.0 out of 5 stars
Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on February 4, 2016Verified Purchase
Amazing. This book needs to be read!
One person found this helpful
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