Ex-Justice Bork Promotes Book on U.S. Culture

American culture--from religion to morality to law--is on what may be an irreversible decline, former U.S. Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork said Wednesday on a tour to promote his new book.

“If I had been confirmed, I would not have changed much, if anything,” said Bork, 69, given what he argues in his book is the court’s migration to the left. “I would spend most of my time commiserating with [Justices Antonin] Scalia and [Clarence] Thomas and writing dissents. I think I’m just as well off where I am.”

The private reception hosted by the Nixon Library at the Center Club here was part of the retired jurist’s two-day stop in Orange County to promote his book, “Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline.” Bork told an audience of about 150 civic and business leaders from Orange County that he believes that, in retrospect, it was for the best that his nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected in 1987.

Hewing to the message in his book, Bork traced what he sees as the decline of American culture to the political and academic cultures of the 1960s, which led to, he said, “modern liberalism.”

The result of the new liberalism movement, Bork said, bred “radical individualism” and “radical egalitarianism.” The latter, he added, “resulted in affirmative action and quotas.”

Bork, now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, said he does see some hope for American’s future.

“I think there’s some hope in the signs of religious renewal,” Bork said, citing as an example the conservative Christian group Promise Keepers. “I don’t know how deep it is. I don’t know how strong it is. . . . Whether the renewal will be strong enough to reverse the trends, I do not know.”

Bork is scheduled to give a public lecture at the Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda today followed by a book-signing.