Examining what the author considers the destructive effects of liberalism on our ideals of liberty and equality, a cultural study identifies a national decline in values while focusing on current issues. 150,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo. Tour. Robert Bork will go down as one of history's footnotes. Nominated to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan in 1987, he was voted down by the Senate following a no-holds barred confirmation fight. Almost a decade later, he returns to reopen old wounds with Slouching towards Gomorrah , an extended attack against everything liberal. From pop culture and our universities to the church (Protestant and Roman Catholic) and the Supreme Court--the very institution he once fought so hard to join--Bork finds fault wherever he looks. This is a bitter book from a passionate man who has very little good to say about the world he lives in. With its emphasis on outcomes vs. opportunity and on personal gratification, liberalism is destroying the cultural fabric of America, says Bork, author of the best-selling The Tempting of America (LJ 11/1/89). The liberal elites that control all major social institutions, most significantly the universities, churches, media, and government bureaucracies, regard morality as an impediment to personal convenience. Bork regards the 1960s as a loathsome decade when moral integrity was destroyed and the current leaders of these elites were spawned. He details how these "barbarians" have unleashed torrents of political correctness, radical feminism, anti-intellectualism, and affirmative action on society. Writing with an ardent certitude that true conservatives will applaud while those with moderate and liberal leanings will regard as demagoguery, Bork states his views effectively, but he repeatedly uses examples of excess to define mainstream liberalism. For an excellent liberal view of the culture wars, see Todd Gitlin's The Twilight of Common Dreams (Holt, 1995). Strongly recommended for public libraries. -?Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, Pa. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. 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 A former judge's stinging indictment of the havoc postmodern liberalism has wrought on the state of the American union. An eloquent, often elegant, advocate, Bork (whose ultimately aborted nomination to the US Supreme Court unleashed an ideological firestorm in mid1987) defines latter-day liberalism as an ad hoc coalition of cultural elites (academics, ecclesiastics, entertainers, filmmakers, foundation professionals, journalists, jurists, public-interest groups, et al.) committed to a radical egalitarianism and unfettered individualism. In sorrow as well as anger, he assesses the demonstrably corrosive impact these no-fault credos have had on a host of activities and institutions. Cases in point range from the violently misogynistic lyrics of rap music through permissive sexual attitudes that have escalated teen pregnancy rates, the debasement of university curricula with trivial or spurious courses of study, insistence on equality of outcomes as well as opportunity, and the emergence of moral relativism as an acceptable alternative to traditional values. Citing an increasing incidence of self-segregation by ethnic minorities, a discernible rise in anti-intellectualism, antipathy toward mainstream religions, the left's intolerance of dissent, and a half-hearted approach to crime and pun