Michelle, Bork is somewhat of a leader in the "Decline of the West" wing of the Republican party. Check out
SLOUCHING TOWARDS GOMORRAH Modern Liberalism and American Decline By Robert H. Bork
This came out two years ago. Acid tongued Michiko Kakutani of the Times had this to say:
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.''
To support this assessment, Mr. 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 teen-agers and increasing racial tensions.
As for the cause, Mr. 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).''
He argues that ''the tendencies inherent in individualism were kept within bounds'' in the past by ''a common moral culture and the strength of religion,'' but adds that ''liberalism drained the power'' from those institutions, contributing to our current state of rootless hedonism.
In the course of setting out these arguments, Mr. Bork makes some astute points about the politicization (not to mention Balkanization) of American culture and the diminished role that reason and rationality have come to play in our intellectual discourse. Mr. Bork's more cogent points, however, are overshadowed by his own ideological fervor and myopia: his willingness to go to rhetorical extremes to try to demolish the left, and his unwillingness to even examine the role that the right (from Jesse Helms to the Christian Coalition) has also played in damaging the American gift for consensus. The result is an angry, preachy book that attempts to bludgeon the reader over the head with hectoring assertions, rather than persuade through judicious argument.
A style we should all be familiar with here, he notes drily.
More alarming to many readers will be Mr. Bork's bluntly worded calls for censorship (''starting with the obscene prose and pictures available on the Internet, motion pictures that are mere rhapsodies to violence, and the more degenerate lyrics of rap music'') and ''a constitutional amendment making any Federal or state court decision subject to being overruled by a majority vote of each House of Congress.'' Mr. Bork, typically, does not really grapple with the consequences of such proposals: he does not deal, for instance, with the question of exactly who would impose censorship rules, where the guidelines would be drawn or what would prevent such censorship from completely quashing First Amendment rights.
Indeed, as Mr. Bork sees it, the concepts of liberty and equality espoused by the Declaration of Independence (''We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'') are vastly overrated.
''The ringing phrases are hardly useful,'' Mr. Bork writes, ''indeed may be pernicious, if taken, as they commonly are, as a guide to action, governmental or private. Then the words press eventually toward extremes of liberty and the pursuit of happiness that court personal license and social disorder.'' In another chapter, he goes so far as to suggest that the passion for equality lacks ''any intellectual foundation.''
The guy was just ahead of his time, I guess.
Cheers, Dan. |
