Robert Bork Rails Against Liberalism

“Slouching Towards Gomorrah” By Robert H. Bork (Regan Books/ HarperCollins, $25, 382 pages)

As the title of Robert H. Bork’s new book, “Slouching Towards Gomorrah,” suggests, the onetime Reagan nominee to the Supreme Court is highly pessimistic about the state of American society today. He argues that “decline runs across our entire culture” and asserts that “the rot is spreading.”

Bork rounds up the usual evidence: the dissolution of the American family, rising illegitimacy rates, an ineffectual welfare system, the proliferation of obscene art and entertainment, the decline of intellectual standards, increasingly violent teenagers and increasing racial tensions.

As for the cause, Bork cites one big culprit: modern liberalism, which in his view has promoted two destructive ideals - “radical egalitarianism (the equality of outcomes rather than of opportunities) and radical individualism (the drastic reduction of limits to personal gratification).” This is an angry, preachy book that bludgeons the reader over the head with hectoring assertions, rather than persuade through judicious argument.