>>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.
Sounds like the reviewer, Michiko Kakutani, was parroting and then projecting well-founded characterizations of himself onto Bork.
Why are so few best-sellers penned by the Left? Is it that the Left has few readers or is it just that they are so intellectually-bereft that they have nothing to say?
I wonder if Michiko Kaka will ever write anything worth reading. He certainly does seem to do an exacting parody of the typically closed-minded, hate-filled liberal.
Here are more balanced reviews:
Commentary Magazine, April 1997, Joseph Adelson
This book, which became a (perhaps) unexpected bestseller, is a
catalogue raisonnie of the legacy of the 1960s, and in particular of that
decade's sudden explosion of hatred toward this country on the part of
some of its most privileged citizens, the children of the liberal middle class.
To read Judge Bork's succinct account in the opening pages of the events
he witnessed on the campus of Yale University, where he then taught in
the law school, is to recall the surprise and confusion some of us felt when
we first beheld that strange spectacle: indulged and self-indulgent college
students portraying themselves, in all apparent sincerity, as victims of the
cruelest tyranny, while their elders, professors and deans, unable to oppose
or even answer them, suffered their accusations meekly or added their
own voices to the chorus of condemnation.
Some of us thought these passions were too shallow to survive the
moment, and would soon be spent. But of course we could not have been
more wrong. As Bork writes, what took place then was
self-sustaining--not merely a spasm of disgust at the escalating war in
Vietnam but a "revolt against the entire American culture." This revolt
soon turned into a steady state of siege, either directly or implicitly coming
to dominate most reasoned discourse on American life.
Chapter by chapter, Slouching Towards Gomorrah methodically takes us
through the sectors of our experience which have been infected by the
excesses of post-1960s liberalism: from popular culture to crime,
illegitimacy, the welfare system, abortion, euthanasia, sexuality and sexual
roles, race, intelligence, religion, and morality. On each of these topics
Bork brings to bear an astonishing range of information and argument.
From Booklist , September 1, 1996
Spurned for a seat on the Supreme Court, Bork has become a cogent
commentator on U.S. culture and politics. Here he has the former in mind,
although, in his eyes, one bane of American culture since the 1960s has
been the politicization of nearly everything. Bork blames the twin thrusts of
modern liberalism--radical individualism and radical egalitarianism--for the
cultural decay he finds in an increasingly obscene pop culture, rising
illegitimacy and long-term welfare dependency, dangerous leniency with
violent offenders, abortion and euthanasia, feminist lies and intimidation,
legalized racial discrimination (affirmative action), dumbed-down
education, antireligious bias in the courts and the press, and socially
disintegrative multiculturalism. Before and after several chapters on how
liberalism produces those maladies, Bork discusses the circumstances that
allow liberalism to circumvent democracy: liberalism predominates among
opinion-molding intellectuals, foundation executives, university professors,
and bureaucrats. Most damagingly, Bork says, the federal judiciary is
rotten with liberalism and has become the instrument with which unpopular
liberal measures are forced upon the public. Bork cannot see that anything
systemic can be done to change the judiciary. Rather, he sees hope for
democracy in the resurgence of religion and the determination of religious
people to influence public policy. Forthright and magisterial, this is a fine
summary of "social conservativism," one those who want to understand
that position should read first. Ray Olson
amazon.com |
