Slouching Towards Gomorrah by {author}: summary and why it matters
Robert Bork's 1996 pessimistic account of how radical individualism and egalitarianism have corroded American culture and law.
Also known as Modern Liberalism and American Decline
The book
| Author | Robert H. Bork |
|---|---|
| First published | 1996 |
| First publisher | ReganBooks |
| Kind of book | Cultural criticism |
What it argues
Bork argues that two forces, radical individualism and radical egalitarianism, have driven American culture since the 1960s. Individualism, he says, treats the gratification of the self as the highest good and attacks the authority of morals, religion and law. Egalitarianism attacks the distinctions of merit, sex and culture.
He surveys the results in entertainment and the arts, in crime and punishment, in universities, in the treatment of religion, in feminism and in the law, where he says courts have taken the lead in removing the moral basis of society. He is gloomy: he doubts that the trend can be reversed and says that a collapse may be needed.
The only hope he sees is a revival of religion and a turn to a constitutional amendment allowing Congress to override Supreme Court decisions, a suggestion widely criticized.
Why it matters
The book is a source of the declinist strand of conservative thought, and for that reason is relevant to current debates about culture. It also shows how a leading legal thinker connected his views on law to a larger worry about society.
About the author
The title echoes a line in a poem by W. B. Yeats and an essay by Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Bork wrote it after leaving the bench, while a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. It was a best-seller in 1996, and the author expanded some of its arguments in a later book on the courts, Coercing Virtue, in 2003.
Who should read it
Readers of cultural criticism who can stand a harsh tone.
Sources
Profile last reviewed November 8, 2026