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Slouching Towards Gomorrah | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert H. Bork
Publisher: HarperCollins
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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Rating:  136 reviews
Sales Rank: 536889
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6 x 1.6
ISBN: 0060391634
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.0973
EAN: 9780060391638
ASIN: 0060391634
Publication Date: June 1, 1996
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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.
Product Description
Judge Bork, one of our nation's most distinguished conservative scholars offers a prophetic view of a culture in decline, a nation in such serious moral trouble that its very foundation is crumbling. Of our own President, Bork writes: "Thirty years ago, Clinton's behavior would have been absolutely disqualifying.... It is difficult not to conclude that something about our moral perceptions and reactions has changed profoundly. If that change is permanent, the implication for our future is bleak." Bork has brilliantly encapsulated a nation and a culture on the brink. He courageously sounds an alarm for all Americans.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 131 more reviews...
 Worthwhile ideas destroyed by too many errors and omissions October 31, 2008
mianfei
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Robert Bork's "Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline" has long attratced my attention - an attention that ultimately I often feel comes from being a victim of people listening to the violent music whose condemnation is one of the book's highlights.
Bork's basic thesis is that modern liberalism is destroying the basis upon which Western civilisation was built and unless a dramatic reversal of cultural trends occurs Western civilisation will disintegrate. "Modern liberalism" for Bork is a combination of radical egalitarianism involving the belief that every group of people must be equally represented in every institution with radical individualism requiring the most absolute possible freedom for every person.
In "Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline", Bork looks at what he sees as the critical aspects of modern liberalism from multiculturalism to feminism to the degradation of culture. In his viewpoint, multiculturalism has led to a loss of respect and even criticism of unique accomplishments of Western civilisation, feminism is contrary to normal biological roles, and the violent degradation of popular culture is the result of a nihilism that admits of no social duties and is completely present-oriented with no though for the future.
Bork's argument of these points is by no means bad: I can even sympathise with what he says about the narcissistic nihilism present in so much modern music, and the points he makes about the way in which cultural studies at some American universities are deliberately geared to ignore the more "civilised" non-Western cultures is likewise not a bad point.
However, even here, Bork is confused when he says "Rap songs like "Horny" and "Big Man with a Gun" are not, as one would hope, culturally marginal...". Though Bork undoubtedly wishes to lump all violent music under the label "rap", fans of industrial (Nine Inch Nails) or death metal are a quite different cultural group from those of gangsta rap even if their message is little different. His tendency towards error is also seen when I could not find a song "Horny" on any Snoop Doggy Dogg album.
Also, whilst he looks at cultural trends in the United States, Bork doe snot realise that in every other developed nations bar Australia the situation is much, much worse. Whereas in the US there is active opposition to "narcissistic nihilism", such opposition is completely absent in Europe or Canada or New Zealand. His lack of knowledge of Europe in particular, also leads him to some dubious conclusions: if you study European history, you ought to realise that "narcissistic nihilism" was merely driven unground by people like Franco and Salazar and returned with a vengeance later.
All in all, this could have been a very valuable guide to Western culture if it were written with better knowledge and perspective and more checking of facts. As it stands, "Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline" is too full of errors and omissions to recommend.
 Required reading in schools? September 29, 2008
Robert Decell (usa)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Never in history has a nation embraced a radical individualistic and egalitarian ideology as ours has. Bork quotes Menant as describing how torment arises in the breast of those who are exposed to talent and intelligence greater than their own and how the tormentee goes to great lengths to undermine virtues that give rise to excellence. Guilt is a powerful motivator and leads to unnatural behavior. By merging vice and virtue inferiority complexes are soothed. But why would public officials and scholars embrace such a destructive course? Because dictatorial media has them wrapped around their finger. They buy into compassion and care crusades media demands. Thus pornography is freedom of expression, rights mean that women should abandon family and raising kids. . . that we have a right to others property, etc. Government has been hijacked by homosexuals, lesbians, feminist, and liberals whose ideas are destructive to freedom and family. Since officials are willing to sacrifice principle and virtue at the alter of power they are accomplices to crime and murder and deserve to be treated as such.
Slouching towards Moscow August 10, 2008
Mytheos Holt
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Robert Bork's story is one of the more tragic ones in jurisprudential history. Even his most liberal critics, when pressed, are forced to agree that despite what they conceive as his medieval views, the man was eminently qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. What's more, the smears instituted to keep him from that august post are truly miserable examples of depravity and are surely marked on St. Peter's list as spiritual demerits for their authors.
But whatever else Bork may be, this book proves that he is emphatically not a cultural critic. The most concise way to sum up the problem with this book is to say that it wishes it didn't exist, or more accurately, that Bork wishes it didn't exist. He obviously did not wish to have to write it, since the tone of the book makes it clear that he views the problems with American culture to be self-evident. This is a potentially deadly premise for a polemic to start with, and it destroys Bork's work. Bork's tone does not speak of a desire to correct his audience's misapprehension of the world - it speaks of a desire to chastise them with shrieks of indignation. Whereas many polemics treat opposing arguments with derision in refuting them, Bork skips the refutation entirely and simply seems to be saying "how dare you even think of raising those arguments, young man? Go to your room!"
If one wants to preach to the choir, this tone works well. If one is speaking to a choir member who is slightly apprehensive about the sermon (like this reviewer), it fails utterly. The problem is not so much that Bork's diagnosis of American culture is wrong (though it does have one glaring error which I will point out later), it is that his cure is highly mistaken. Worse yet, Bork goes after his ideological allies in the libertarian movement, labelling them "quasi-conservatives" and sneering about their "radical individualism." He might as well have written "get off my lawn."
That's not to say there aren't bright spots in the book. Bork's best passages are the ones on radical egalitarianism, and its corollary of radical toleration. His passages on the rising tide of illegitimacy and the entitlement mentality practically sparkle with polemical frustration, even though they will not succeed in persuading anyone who does not already agree with Bork. Unfortunately, the most painful elements of the book are also the majority of it - namely Bork's obsession with attacking "radical individualism." However, it quickly becomes apparent that despite protestations to the contrary, Bork really wants to go after ALL individualism insofar as it implies nonconformity. Worse, Bork's idea of censorship fails utterly to take account of the idea that nonconforming urges will simply go underground and flower there once the Government puts its fingers into the culture. Thankfully, his afterword does take cognizance of the fact that censorship can be subverted by liberals, albeit with a tone that implies "I wouldn't gotten away with it, if it weren't for you meddling individualist freaks."
The reason for these two logical blind spots comes from a critical problem in Bork's diagnosis - his focus on individualism as the problem. Considering that Bork was a socialist in his youth, this may not be surprising. In any case, it's obvious that the book's real purpose has nothing to do with radical egalitarianism and everything to do with shrieking in the faces of his audience that they have responsibilities to the rest of society, and how dare they even think about implying otherwise. If Bork were still a socialist, this would be understandable, but he's not. The fatal problem which Bork fails to take cognizance of is actually NOT radical individualism, but radical egalitarianism. That is, though Bork is correct that a great deal more filth is available in the culture today than it was before, the reason why people don't feel guilty consuming it is not because of refusal by the government to regulate their tastes, but refusal by the artistic/cultural elites to acknowledge that there is such a thing as filth. What needs rejuvenating in today's culture is not censorship, which grew out of a cultural desire for higher art, but rather the notion that there is such a thing as high art. The notion that the Government shouldn't tell people what to like is perfectly sound - what is not sound is the notion that human beings should not tell other human beings what to like. Bork's book continually dances around this conclusion, but never hits it because of his obsession with proving our communal responsibility to one another. Ultimately, however, it is this fact that shows not only why society has gone down the toilet, but also why censorship has been subverted to destroy conservatism in the way Bork discusses in his afterword - all of American culture has become so focused on everything being equally valid, that we have made everything equally invalid. The great trouble is that culturally, we are slouching towards Moscow, which is a far worse place to live than Gomorrah.
The definitive statement of the conservative critique of liberalism April 4, 2008
Richard Gibson (Woodland Hills, CA)
This book was first written in 1996. Not many books are worth reading, 12 years after they are published. This one is.
Bork was the federal appeals court judge appointed to the Supreme Court by Reagan, whose confirmation was denied after a bitter battle in the Senate. Prior to then, he was a law professor at Yale. He is one of modern America's strongest and clearest thinkers. Almost every page offers quotations which state, with matchless clarity and force, deep insight about some key modern issue.
This book is a systematic look at how modern liberalism emerged, and is systematically destroying American culture. The power of Judge Bork's analysis is extraordinary. He is learned in history, philosophy and the law. He ranges across American culture, discussing in turn the philosophic roots of liberalism, its legal views and its manifestations in such diverse fields as feminism, scholarship, music and religion. His view is one of relentless gloom. As he sees it, modern liberals are the barbarians within, whose goal is to annihilate our culture and replace it with utterly unrestained hedonism and moral anarchy.
I agree with much of what Bork says, but I do not share his pessimism. As I was reading this, I also was reading Chernow's biography of Hamilton. The epic battle between Hamilton and Jefferson, in many ways, resembles the issues which Bork discusses. Hamilton can easily be seen as representing all that was good and solid in early American history. Jefferson can easily be seen as a demagogic, hypocrite, who talked about democracy while owning slaves, and whose visionary ideology sought to destroy the financial stability of the young Republic.
You can see the Jefferson-Hamilton battle that way. It certainly seemed that way to Hamilton, who saw as little good in Jefferson as Bork sees in our liberals. Yet, 200 years later, we can see that was good about Hamilton's system survived, and that Jefferson also had great virtues. No, Jefferson did not understand finances, and he dismantled the navy, which lead to the national humiliation of the War of 1812. But he also popularized the idea of democracy. He was extremely good at public relations, and he used that skill to promote freedom. Years later, Lincoln brought the legacy of Hamilton and Jefferson together, into a grand synthesis.
Perhaps, years from now, we will see that modern liberals have played as constructive a role, in their own way. as did Jefferson. We can already chalk up on their side of the scorecard black civil rights and equal rights for women. Who knows what their ultimate role in American history will be. Where I disagree with Bork is that I simply do not believe that all goodness and justice is on one side, and that the other side is utterly without value. I follow his critique, and I largely agree with it, but the world is bigger than we are and large movements -- like Jeffersonian democracy or modern liberalism -- do not come into existence without some good reason.
A must-read for anyone who cares about our nation's future March 12, 2008
Kitty Foth-Regner (Waukesha, WI USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is not to be missed by anyone who is concerned about where our country is heading. With surgical precision, Judge Bork dissects our declining culture, discovering in the process advanced moral decay that may well be inoperable. Because this decay is spiritual in nature, the book provides an ideal backdrop for studying the word of the God who created us all.
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