Slouching Towards Gomorrah - Hardcover

Robert H. Bork

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060391634 ISBN 13: 9780060391638

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1996

Synopsis

Examining what the author considers the destructive effects of liberalism on our ideals of liberty and equality, a cultural study identifies a national decline in values while focusing on current issues. 150,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo. Tour.

About this title

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.

From the Publisher:

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" --William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"

Welcome to America, 1996, and the "rough beast" that the visionary poet Yeats foresaw in 1919 is now a monster of decadence, a plague several generations in gestation and we as a nation, are now slouching, not towards Bethlehem, but towards Gomorrah, the biblical city burned to the ground for the sinfulness of its people.

In Robert H. Bork's Slouching Towards Gomorrah, one of our nation's most distinguished conservative scholars offers a prophetic and unprecedented 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. Since the 1992 election the public has learned far more about what is known euphemistically, as the 'character issue'. Yet none of this appears to affect Clinton's popularity. It is difficult 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."

The root of our decline, Bork argues, is 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). The roots of modern liberalism are deeply embedded in the last two and a half centuries - and perhaps - arise from the very nature of Western civilization itself.

From the collapse of popular culture to the general weakening of intellect, from the role of the Supreme Court as an agent of modern liberalism to the trouble in religion, from the assault of radical feminism on American institutions and freedoms, to the "killing for convenience" of abortion and euthanasia, Bork has brilliantly encapsulated a nation and a culture on the brink. He courageously sounds an alarm for all Americans.

To understand our current plight and the direction in which we are moving, Bork believes we must look to the sixties, a decade in which the moral integrity of our nation came under full blown assault. We have never recovered from that attack because the radicals of the Sixties have taken over or heavily modified the cultural institutions they once sought to destroy.

We can accept our fate and try to insulate ourselves and our loved ones from the devastating effects of a degenerating culture or we can choose to halt the beast, to oppose modern liberalism in every arena. In the view of Robert Bork, an understanding of our problem and the will to resist may be our only hope.

Robert H. Bork received his undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Chicago. He has been a partner at a major law firm, taught constitutional law as the Alexander M. Bickell Professor of Public Law at the Yale law school, served as Solicitor General and as Acting Attorney General of the United States and served as a United States Court of Appeals judge. Author of the bestselling The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law, he and his wife live in Washington DC, where he is the John M. Olin Scholar in Legal Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

"A tour de force... a must-read for anyone concerned about the state of American society at the close of the twentieth century." --Ralph Reed Executive Director, Christian Coalition

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0060391634
• ISBN 13: 9780060391638
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400