Slouching Towards Gomorrah

by Robert H. Bork

  31. Lipset, p. 3.

  Chapter 2

  1. Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties (New York: Touchstone, 1990), p. 14.

  2. “In Praise of the Counterculture,” New York Times, December 11, 1994, Sec. 4, p. 14.

  3. Charles J. Sykes, The Hollow Men: Politics and Corruption in Higher Education (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1990), p. 145.

  4. Joseph B. Treaster, “Brewster Doubts Fair Black Trials,” New York Times, April 25, 1970, p. A1.

  5. John Hersey, A Letter to the Alumni (New York: Bantam Books, 1971).

  6. Ibid., p. 114.

  7. Many of the facts recited here and all of the quotes are taken from Allan P. Sindler’s unpublished manuscript “The Cornell Crisis of 1969.“

  8. “Investigations; Kent State: Another View,” TIME, October 26, 1970, p. 27.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Peter L. Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, Movement and Revolution (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), pp. 43–7.

  11. Ibid., pp. 46–7.

  12. Walter Berns, “The New Left and Liberal Democracy,” How Democratic Is America? Responses to the New Left Challenge, ed. Robert Goldwin (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1971), pp. 29–30.

  13. Collier and Horowitz, p. 77.

  14. Robert Nisbet, Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 186.

  15. “September 1, 1939,” The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden (New York: Random House, 1945).

  16. Collier and Horowitz, pp. 294—5.

  17. George Will, “Slamming the Doors,” Newsweek, March 25, 1991, pp. 65–6.

  18. Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter, Roots of Radicalism: Jews, Christians, and the New Left (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 392–4.

  19. Terry H. Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 413.

  Chapter 3

  1. Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 225.

  2. Ibid., pp. 225–7.

  3. Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), pp. 239–40.

  4. John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty,” Three Essays (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1975, 1978), p. 14.

  5. Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Liberty and Liberalism: Vie Case of John Stuart Mill (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974).

  6. Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), p. 103.

  7. James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, ed. Stuart D. Warner (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1993).

  8. Himmelfarb, On Liberty and Liberalism, p. xx.

  9. Himmelfarb, On Looking into the Abyss, pp. 77–8.

  10. T. S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture: The Idea of a Christian Society & Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1940, 1949), p. 12.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Pierre Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 62–3.

  13. Victorian and Edwardian Poets: Tennyson to Yeats, eds. W. H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson (New York: Viking Press, 1950), p. xix.

  14. Irving Kristol, “My Cold War,” The National Interest, Spring 1993, pp. 141, 144.

  15. Mill, p. 118.

  16. Edmund Burke, “Speech at His Arrival at Bristol Before the Election in That City (1774),” Speeches and Letters on American Affairs (London: J. M. Dent, 1908, 1956), p. 66.

  17. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to That Event (London: Penguin Books, 1968), p. 91.

  18. William J. Bennett, “The Children,” What to Do About …, ed. Neal Kozodoy (New York: Regan Books/HarperCollins, 1995), p. 5.

  Chapter 4

  1. Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), p. 234.

  2. Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), p. 22.

  3. Keith Bradsher, “Gap in Wealth In U.S. Called Widest in West,” New York Times, April 17, 1995, p. 1.

  4. Michael Novak, “What Wealth Gap?,” Wall Street Journal, July 11, 1995, p. A16.

  5. Irving Kristol, Neoconservatism: the Autobiography of an Idea (New York: The Free Press, 1995), p. 166.

  6. The quotes in the subsequent five paragraphs are from Walter J. Blum and Harry Kalven, Jr., The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953, 1976).

  7. James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense (New York: The Free Press, 1993), pp. 55–78.

  8. Ibid., pp. 60–1.

  9. Ibid., p. 77.

  10. James K. Glassman, “The Rich Already Pay Plenty,” Washington Post, July 11, 1995, p. A17.

  11. Helmut Schoeck, Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1987), p. 179.

  12. Bertrand de Jouvenel, The Ethics of Redistribution (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1952), pp. 79–81. (Footnote omitted)

  13. Martin Malia, “A Fatal Logic,” The National Interest, Spring 1993, pp. 80, 87.

  14. Pierre Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 107–8.

  15. Kurt Vonnegut, “It Seemed Like Fiction,” Wall Street Journal, July 29, 1994, p. A10.

  16. William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880–1964 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), p. 7.

  17. Schoeck, p. 329.

  18. Wilson, The Moral Sense, p. 74.

  19. Allan Bloom, “The Democratization of the University,” How Democratic Is America?: Responses to the New Left Challenge, ed. Robert Goldwin (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969), p. 114.

  20. Karl Mannheim, Man and Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1940, 1966), pp. 89–91.

  21. Ibid., p. 91.

  22. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971) and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).

  23. Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 6.

  24. Richard Grenier, “Equality of Intelligence,” Washington Times, May 29, 1995, p. A21.

  25. Jouvenel, p. 73.

  26. Aaron Wildavsky, The Rise of Radical Egalitarianism (Washington, DC: American University Press, 1991), p. xxx.

  27. Alexis de Touqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1945), vol. 2, p. 337.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Ibid., p. 101.

  30. Manent, p. 111.

  31. Charles J. Sykes, A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character (New York: St. Martins Press, 1992).

  32. Tocqueville, vol. 2, p. 352.

  Chapter 5

  1. Friedrich A. Hayek, The Constitution of liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 2.

  2. Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947), p. 147.

  3. Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), pp. 124–5.

  4. Ibid., p. 135.

  5. Richard Grenier. Capturing the Culture: Film, Art, and Politics (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1991), pp. xxxiv-xxxv.

  6. Hillary D. Rodham, “Remarks on the Occasion of Wellesley’s 91st Commencement,” speech delivered May 31, 1969.

  7. Release of the Office of the Press Secretary, the White House, “Remarks of the First Lady at Liz Carpenter’s Lectureship Series,” University of Texas, April 6, 1993.

  8. Michael Kelly, “Saint Hillary,” New York Times Magazine, May 23, 1993, pp. 22, 24.

  9. Ibid., p. 65.

  10. Thomas Fields-Meyer, “This Year’s Prophet,” New York Times Magazine, June 27, 1993, p. 28.

  11. Rabbi Michael Lerner, “Work: A Politics of Meaning Approach to Policy,” Tikkun, M
ay/June 1993, pp. 23,25–6.

  12. Robert Lerner, Althea K. Nagai, and Stanley Rothman, American Elites (New Haven: Yale University Press, in press).

  13. Ibid., chapter 7.

  14. Ibid., chapter 6.

  15. Ibid., chapter 9.

  16. Paul Hollander, Anti-Americanism: Critiques at Home and Abroad, 1965–1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 149.

  17. Jennifer Kaylin, “Bass, Yale, and Western Civ.,” Yale Alumni Magazine, Summer 1995, p. 39.

  18. Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920’s (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 189–90.

  19. Ken Ringle, “Political Correctness: Art’s New Frontier,” Washington Post, March 31, 1991, p. Gl.

  20. Hollander, p. 86.

  21. Robert Alter, “The Persistence of Reading,” Partisan Review Special Issue on “The Politics of Political Correctness” (1993), p. 512.

  22. Schumpeter, p. 148.

  23. Ibid., pp. 148–9.

  24. James Gardner, Culture or Trash?: A Provocative View of Contemporary Painting, Sculpture, and Other Costly Commodities (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1993), p. 218.

  25. Seymour Martin Lipset, Rebellion in the University (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993), p. 200.

  26. Helmut Schoeck, Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1987), pp. 328–9.

  27. Ibid., p. 127.

  28. James Q. Wilson, On Character (Washington, DC: The AEI Press, 1991), p. 39.

  29. Myron Magnet, The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties Legacy to the Underclass (New York: William Morrow, 1993).

  Chapter 6

  1. Robert Nisbet, Conservatism: Dream and Reality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), p. 41.

  2. William A. Donohue, Twilight of Liberty: The Legacy of the ACLU (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994), p. 65. This and his other book. The Politics of the American Civil Liberties Union (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1985), are the definitive works on the ACLU.

  3. Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (New York: The Free Press, 1991).

  4. These matters are discussed in Robert H. Bork, “What to Do About the First Amendment,” Commentary, February 1995, p. 23.

  5. Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971).

  6. Ibid., at 25.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989).

  9. Ibid., at 414.

  10. Ibid., at 417.

  11. Paul Greenberg, “Burning questions over the Stars and Stripes,” Washington Times, July 6, 1995, p. A16.

  12. Dissenting in Street v. New York, 394 U.S. 576 (1969). The majority did not reach the question.

  13. Walter Berns, The First Amendment and the Future of American Democracy (New York: Basic Books, 1976), pp. 160–1.

  14. Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).

  15. Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992).

  16. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965).

  17. Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972).

  18. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).

  19. See Robert H. Bork, The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law (New York: The Free Press, 1990).

  20. Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992).

  21. Ibid., at 851.

  22. Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186,204 (1986).

  23. Ibid.

  24.Ibid.

  25.Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

  26. Bork, The Tempting of America, pp. 74–83.

  27. Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966).

  28 Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964).

  29. United Steelworkers of America v. Weber, 443 U.S. 193 (1979).

  30. Johnson v. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara County, 480 U.S. 616 (1987).

  31. Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. FCC, 497 U.S. 547 (1990).

  32. Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 115 S. Ct. 2097 (1995).

  33. United States v. Virginia, 116 S. Ct. 2263 (1996).

  34. George F. Will, “VMI: Gone,” Washington Post, June 30, 1996, p. C7.

  35. United States v. Virginia, 116 S. Ct. at_ (Scalia, J., dissenting).

  36. Compassion in Dying v. State of Washington, 49 F.3d 586 (9th Cir. 1995).

  37. 79 F.3d 790,800 (9th Cir. 1995).

  38. Quill v. Vacco, 80 F.3d 716 (2d Cir. 1996).

  39. Baehr v. Lewin, 74 Haw. 530, 580; 852 P.2d 44, 67 (1993).

  40. Romer v. Evans, 116 S. Ct. 1620 (1996).

  41. Ibid., at 1629.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Lino Graglia, “It’s Not Constitutionalism, It’s Judicial Activism,” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Winter 1996, pp. 293, 298.

  44. Don Van Natta, Jr., “Judges Defend A Colleague From Attacks,” New York Times, March 29, 1996, p. B1.

  45. Quoted in Gerald Gunther, Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), pp. 247,248.

  46. Ibid., p. 249.

  Chapter 7

  1. Michael Bywater, “Never mind the width, feel the lack of quality,” The Spectator, May 13, 1995, p. 44 (reviewing The Faber Book of Pop, London: Faber, 1995).

  2. Robert Pattison, The Triumph of Vulgarity: Rock Music in the Mirror of Romanticism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 122–3.

  3. S. Robert Lichter, Linda S. Lichter, and Stanley Rothman, Prime Time: How TV Portrays American Culture (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1994), p. 416.

  4. Ibid., pp. 404–5.

  5. Walter Goodman, “As TV Sows Outrage, Guess What It Reaps,” New York Times, March 28, 1995, p. C26.

  6. Paula Span, “Where Do They Find These People?,” Washington Post, April 16, 1992, p. Dl.

  7. James Gardner, Culture or Trash?: A Provocative View of Contemporary Painting, Sculpture, and Other Costly Commodities (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1993).

  8. Ibid., p. 183.

  9. Roberta Smith, “A Show of Moderns Seeking to Shock,” New York Times, November 23, 1995, p. C11.

  10. Roger Kimball, “The heritage of Dada,” The Public Interest, Fall 1994, p. 120.

  11. Ibid., p. 123.

  12. John Leo, “The leading cultural polluter,” U.S. News & World Report, March 27, 1995, p. 16.

  13. All quotes not citing a periodical source are from “notes” taken by Pete Wehner at the May 18, 1995 meeting between William Bennett, DeLores Tucker, et al., and Time Warner executives.

  14. Howard Kurtz, “Time Warner, on the Defensive for the Offensive,” Washington Post, June 2, 1995, pp. AI, A18.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Bernard Weinraub, “Filmmakers Discount Criticism by Dole,” New York Times, June 2, 1995, p. A24.

  17. “The New Global Popular Culture,” American Enterprise Institute Conference, Washington, DC, March 10, 1992.

  18. Ibid.

  19.Ibid.

  20. Martha Bayles, Hole In Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music (New York: The Free Press, 1994), p. 259.

  21. Ibid., p. 258.

  22. John J. O’Connor, “Music as the Food of Hate: Rock for the Skinheads,” New York Times, June 19, 1993, p. 47.

  23. Simon Winchester, “An Electronic Sink of Depravity,” The Spectator, February 4, 1995, p. 9.

  24. Ibid., p. 10.

  25. Ibid., p. 11.

  26. Stephen Bates, “Alt. Many. Of. These. Newsgroups. Are. Repellent.,” The Weekly Standard, October 30, 1995, p. 27.

  27. Winchester, p. 11.

  28. John R. Wilke, “A Publicly Held Firm Turns X-Rated Videos Into a Hot Business,” Wall Street Journal, July 11, 1994, p. 1.

  29. George Gilder, “Breaking the Box,” National Review, August 15, 1994, p. 37.

  30. Leo, p. 16.

  31. Maggie Gallagher, Enemies of Eros: How the Sexual Revolution Is Killing Family, Marriage, and Sex and What We Can Do About It (Chicago: Bonus
Books, 1989), p. 251.

  32. Ibid., p. 252.

  Chapter 8

  1. Stanley Brubaker, “In praise of censorship,” The Public Interest, ‘Winter 1994, p. 48.

  2. Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), p. 85.

  3. Ibid., p. 86.

  4. “Mr. Dole’s Entertainment Guide,” New York Times, June 2, 1995, p.A28.

  5. George Will, “This Week With David Brinkley,” ABC News, June 4, 1995.

  6. Michael Medved, Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), pp.239–252; Vincent Ryan Ruggiero, WARNING: Nonsense Is Destroying America (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1994), pp. 91–125.

  7. Jane D. Brown and Jeanne R, Steele, “Sexuality and American Social Policy,” p. 1. A report prepared for the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, presented September 29, 1995.

  8. bid., pp. 23–24.

  9. S. Robert Lichter, Linda S. Lichter, and Stanley Rothman, Prime Time: How TV Portrays American Culture (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1994), pp. 425–31.

  10. Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973).

  11. George Will, “America’s Slide Into the Sewer,” Newsweek, July 30, 1990, p. 64.

  12. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 571–2 (1942). (footnotes omitted)

  13. Walter Berns, The First Amendment and the Future of American Democracy (New York: Basic Books, 1976), p. 221.

  14. John R. Wilke, “A Publicly Held Firm Turns X-Rated Videos Into a Hot Business,” Wall Street Journal July 11, 1994, p. 8.

  15. Michael Medved, “The Cultures of Hollywood,” Bradley Lecture Series, American Enterprise Institute, January 12, 1993.

  Chapter 9

  1. The facts are set out in accessible form in Gertrude Himmelfarb, The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), pp. 222–37.

  2. James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense, (New York: The Free Press, 1993), p. 178.

  3. Christine Bachrach, William Mosher, Susan Newcomer, and Stephanie Ventura, “What is Happening to Out-of-Wedlock Teen Childbearing?,” paper presented at an American Enterprise Institute conference in Washington, DC, March 20, 1995.