What began to concern me more and more were the clear signs of rot
and decadence germinating within American society-a rot and decadence
that was no longer the consequence of liberalism but was the actual
agenda of contemporary liberalism.... Sector after sector of
American life has been ruthlessly corrupted by the liberal ethos. It
is an ethos that aims simultaneously at political and social
collectivism on the one hand, and moral anarchy on the other.
-Irving Kristol, "My Cold War"
Equivocation has never been Irving Kristol's long suit. About the
fact of rot and decadence there can be no dispute, except from those
who deny that such terms have meaning, and who are, for that reason,
major contributors to rot and decadence. We are accustomed to
lamentations about American crime rates, the devastation wrought by
drugs, rising illegitimacy, the decline of civility, and the
increasing vulgarity of popular entertainment. But the manifestations
of American cultural decline are even more widespread, ranging across
virtually the entire society, from the violent underclass of the
inner cities to our cultural and political elites, from rap music to
literary studies, from pornography to law, from journalism to
scholarship, from union halls to universities. Wherever one looks,
the traditional virtues of this culture are being lost, its vices
multiplied, its values degraded-in short, the culture itself is
unraveling.
These can hardly be random or isolated developments. A degeneration
so universal, afflicting so many seemingly disparate areas, must
proceed from common causes. That supposition is strengthened by the
observation that similar trends seem to be occurring in nearly all
Western industrialized democracies. The main features of these trends
are vulgarity and a persistent left-wing bias, the latter being
particularly evident among the semi-skilled intellectuals- academics,
bureaucrats, and the like-that Kristol calls the New Class.
But why should this be happening? The short answer is the one Kristol
gives: the rise of modern liberalism. (The extent to which he would
agree with the following argument about the sources and future of
modern liberalism, I do not know.) Modern liberalism grew out of
classical liberalism by expanding its central ideals-liberty and
equality- while progressively jettisoning the restraints of religion,
morality, and law even as technology lowered the constraint of hard
work imposed by economic necessity. Those ideals, along with the
right to pursue happiness, are what we said we were about at the
beginning, in the Declaration of Independence. Stirring as rallying
cries for rebellion, less useful, because indeterminate, for the
purpose of arranging political and cultural matters, they become
positively dangerous when taken, without very serious qualifications,
as social ideals.
The qualifications assumed by the founders' generation, but
unexpressed in the Declaration (it would rather have spoiled the
rhetoric to have added "up to a point"), have gradually been peeled
away so that today liberalism has reached an extreme, though not one
fears its ultimate, stage. "Equality" has become radical
egalitarianism (the equality of outcomes rather than of
opportunities), and "liberty" takes the form of radical individualism
(a refusal to admit limits to the gratifications of the self). In
these extreme forms, they are partly produced by, and partly produce,
the shattering of fraternity (or community) that modern liberals
simultaneously long for and destroy.
Individualism and egalitarianism may seem an odd pair, since liberty
in any degree produces inequality, while equality of outcomes
requires coercion that destroys liberty. If they are to operate
simultaneously, radical egalitarianism and radical individualism,
where they do not complement one another, must operate in different
areas of life, and that is precisely what we see in today's culture.
Radical egalitarianism advances, on the one hand, in areas of life
and society where superior achievement is possible and would be
rewarded but for coerced equality: quotas, affirmative action, income
redistribution through progressive taxation for some, entitlement
programs for others, and the tyranny of political correctness
spreading through universities, primary and secondary schools,
government, and even the private sector. Radical individualism, on
the other hand, is demanded when there is no danger that achievement
will produce inequality and people wish to be unhindered in the
pursuit of pleasure. This finds expression particularly in the areas
of sexuality and violence, and their vicarious enjoyment in popular
entertainment.
Individualism and egalitarianism do not always divide the labor of
producing cultural decay. Often enough they collaborate. When
egalitarianism reinforces individualism, denying the possibility that
one culture or moral view can be superior to another, the result is
cultural and moral relativism, whose end products include
multiculturalism, sexual license, obscenity in the popular arts, an
unwillingness to punish crime adequately and, sometimes, even to
convict the obviously guilty. Both the individualist and the
egalitarian (usually in the same skin) are antagonistic to society's
traditional hierarchies or lines of authority-the one because his
pleasures can be maximized only by freedom from authority, the other
because he resents any distinction among people or forms of behavior
that suggests superiority in one or the other.
The universality of these forces is indicated by the fact that they
are prominent features of two institutions at opposite ends of the
cultural spectrum: the Supreme Court of the United States and rock
music.
The Court reflects modern cultural trends most obviously when it
invents new rights of the individual against the decisions of the
political community, but it also does so in the expansion of rights
expressed in the Constitution beyond anything the drafters and
ratifiers could have intended. Radical individualism surfaced when
the Court created a right of privacy, supposedly about the sanctity
of the marital bedchamber, which soon explicitly became a right of
individual autonomy unconnected to privacy. Four justices
subsequently pronounced it a amoral fact that a person belongs to
himself and not others nor to society as a whole"-a "fact" which
means that a person has no obligations outside his own skin. The same
tendency is seen in the Court's drive to privatize religion, as when
a girl is held to have a First Amendment right not to have to sit at
graduation through a short prayer because it might offend her
sensibilities. The list could be extended almost indefinitely. The
autonomy the Court requires, of course, is necessarily selective,
almost invariably consisting of the freedoms preferred by modern
liberalism.
The Court's commitment to egalitarianism is so strong that it
overrode the explicit language and legislative history of the 1964
Civil Rights Act to allow preferences for blacks and women. The Court
usually argued that the preferences were for prior discrimination,
discrimination not against the individuals now benefited but against
other members of their race or sex in the past. Even that requirement
was dropped when the Court allowed preferences for minorities in the
grant of station licenses by the Federal Communications Commission,
despite the lack of any evidence that such grants had ever been
tainted by discrimination. In these ways the Court reflects, and
hence illegitimately legitimates, the thrusts of modern liberal
culture.
To point the parallel: in a book appropriately titled <The Triumph of
Vulgarity>, Robert Pattison points out that rock music celebrates the
unconstrained self: "The extrovert, the madman, the criminal, the
suicide, or the exhibitionist can rise to heroic stature in rock for
the same reasons that Byron or Raskolnikov became romantic heroes-
profligacy and murder are expressions of an emotional intensity that
defies the limits imposed by nature and society." Rock culture
teaches egalitarianism as well, not only in its frequent advocacy of
revolution, but in its refusal to make distinctions about morality or
aesthetics based upon any transcendent principle. There is no such
principle, only sensation, energy, the pleasure of the moment, and
the expansion of the self.
Vulgarity and obscenity are, of course, rife in popular culture. Rock
is followed by rap; television situation comedies and magazine
advertising increasingly rely on explicit sex; such cultural icons as
Roseanne Barr and Michael Jackson can be seen on family- oriented
television clutching their crotches. The prospect is for more and
worse. Companies are now doing billions of dollars' worth of
business in pornographic videos, and volume is increasing rapidly.
They are acquiring inventories of the videos for cable television;
and a nationwide chain of pornographic video and retail stores is in
the works. One pay-per-view network operator says, "This thing is a
freight train."
It is likely to become a rocket ship soon if, as George Gilder
predicts, computers replace television, allowing viewers to call up
digital films and files of news, art, and multimedia from around the
world. He dismisses conservatives' fears that "the boob tube will
give way to what H. L. Mencken might have termed a new Boobissimus,
as the liberated children rush away from the network nurse, chasing
Pied Piper pederasts, snuff-film sadists, and other trolls of
cyberspace." Gilder concedes, "Under the sway of television,
democratic capitalism enshrines a Gresham's law; bad culture drives
out good, and ultimately porn and prurience, violence and blasphemy
prevail everywhere from the dimwitted 'news' shows to the lugubrious
movies." But he blames that on the nature of broadcast technology,
which requires central control and reduces the audience to its lowest
common denominator of tastes and responses.
But the computer will give everyone his own channel: "The creator of
a program on a specialized subject-from Canaletto's art to chaos
theory, from GM car transmission repair to cowboy poetry, from
Szechuan restaurant finance to C++ computer codes-will be able to
reach everyone in the industrialized world who shares the interest."
Perhaps. But there seems little reason to think there will not also
be an enormous increase in obscene and violent programs. Many places
already have fifty or more cable channels, including some very good
educational channels, but there are still MTV's music videos, and the
porn channels are coming on line. The more private viewing becomes,
the more likely that salacious and perverted tastes will be indulged.
That is suggested by the explosion of pornographic film titles and
profits when videocassettes enabled customers to avoid going to
"adult" theaters. Another boom should occur when those customers
don't even have to ask for the cassettes in a store. The new
technology, while it may bring the wonders Gilder predicts, will
almost certainly make our culture more vulgar and violent.
The leader of the revolution in pornographic video, referred to
admiringly by a competitor as the Ted Turner of the business, offers
the usual defenses of decadence: "Adults have a right to see
[pornography] if they want to. If it offends you, don't buy it."
Modern liberalism employs the rhetoric of "rights" incessantly to
delegitimize restraints on individuals by communities. It is a
pernicious rhetoric because it asserts a right without giving
reasons. If there is to be anything that can be called a community,
the case for previously unrecognized individual freedoms must be
thought through, and "rights" cannot win every time.
The second notion- "If it offends you, don't buy it"-is both lulling
and destructive. Whether you buy it or not, you will be greatly
affected by those who do. The aesthetic and moral environment in
which you and your family live will be coarsened and brutalized.
There are economists who confuse the idea that markets should be free
with the idea that everything should be on the market. The first idea
rests on the efficiency of the free market in satisfying wants; the
second raises the question of which wants it is moral to satisfy. The
latter question brings up the topic of externalities: you are free
not to make steel, but you will be affected by the air pollution of
those who do make it. To complaints about pornography and violence
on television, libertarians reply, "All you have to do is hit the
remote control and change channels." But, like the person who chooses
not to make steel, you and your family will be affected by the people
who do not change the channel. As Michael Medved puts it, "To say
that if you don't like the popular culture then turn it off, is like
saying, if you don't like the smog, stop breathing.... There are
Amish kids in Pennsylvania who know about Madonna." And their parents
can do nothing about that.
Can there be any doubt that as pornography and violence become
increasingly popular and accessible entertainment, attitudes about
marriage, fidelity, divorce, obligations to children, the use of
force, and permissible public behavior and language will change, and
with the change of attitudes will come changes in conduct, both
public and private? The contrary view must assume that people are
unaffected by what they see and hear. Advertisers bet billions the
other way. Advocates of liberal arts education assure us those
studies improve character; it is not very likely that only uplifting
culture affects attitudes and behavior. "Don't buy it" and "Change
the channel" are simply advice to accept a degenerating culture and
its consequences.
Modern liberalism also presses our politics to the left because
egalitarianism is hostile to the authorities and hierarchies-moral,
religious, social, economic, and intellectual- that are
characteristic of a bourgeois or traditional culture and a capitalist
economy. Yet modern liberalism is not hostile to hierarchy as such.
Egalitarianism requires hierarchy because equality of condition
cannot be achieved or approximated without coercion. The coercers
will be bureaucrats and politicians who will, and already do, form a
new elite class. Political and governmental authority replace the
authorities of family, church, profession, and business. The project
is to sap the strength of these latter institutions so that
individuals stand bare before the state, which, liberals assume with
considerable justification, they will administer. We will be coerced
into virtue, as modern liberals define virtue: a ruthlessly
egalitarian society. This agenda is, of course, already well
advanced.
Both diminished performance and personal injustice are accomplished
through radically egalitarian measures. Quotas and affirmative
action, for example, are common and increasing not only in the
workplace but in university admissions, faculty hiring, and
promotion. The excuse is past discrimination, but the result is that
individuals who have never been discriminated against are preferred
to individuals who have never discriminated, regardless of their
respective achievements. Predictably, the result is anger on both
sides and an increasingly polarized society. After years of struggle
to emplace the principle of reward according to achievement, the
achievement principle is being jettisoned for one of reward according
to birth once more.
Remarkably little thought attends this process. The demand is always
for more equality, but no egalitarian ever specifies how much
equality will be enough. And so the leveling process grinds
insensately on. The <Wall Street Journal> recently reprinted a Kurt
Vonnegut story, which the paper retitled "It Seemed Like Fiction"
because it was written "in 1961, before the passage of the Equal Pay
Act (1963), the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Age Discrimination in
Employment Act (1967), the Equal Employment Opportunity Act (1972),
the Rehabilitation Act (1973), the Americans with Disabilities Act
(1990), the Older Workers' Benefit Protection Act (1990), and the
Civil Rights Act (1991)." At the time of reprinting, Congress was
preparing hearings on "The Employment Nondiscrimination Act of 1994"
and was considering additional amendments to the Civil Rights Act.
Even before all this, Vonnegut saw the trend and envisioned the day
when Americans would achieve perfect equality: persons of superior
intelligence required to wear mental handicap radios that emit a
sharp noise every twenty seconds to keep them from taking unfair
advantage of their brains, persons of superior strength or grace
burdened with weights, those of uncommon beauty forced to wear masks.
Why not?
Modern liberalism is most particularly a disease of our cultural
elites, the people who control the institutions that manufacture or
disseminate ideas, attitudes, and symbols- universities, some
churches, Hollywood, the national press (print and electronic), much
of the congressional Democratic party and some of the congressional
Republicans as well, large sections of the judiciary, foundation
staffs, and almost all the "public interest" organizations that
exercise a profound if largely unseen effect on public policy. So
pervasive is the influence of those who occupy the commanding heights
of our culture that it is not entirely accurate to call the United
States a majoritarian democracy. The elites of modern liberalism do
not win all the battles, but despite their relatively small numbers,
they win more than their share and move the culture always in one
direction.
This is not a conspiracy but a syndrome. These are people who view
the world from a common perspective, a perspective to the left of the
attitudes of the general public. Two explanations for this phenomenon
have been advanced. Both seem accurate. One is a heretical version of
Marxism, a theory of class warfare; the other might be called a
heretical version of religion, a theory of the hunger for
spirituality, for a meaning to life.
Joseph Schumpeter first articulated the idea that capitalism requires
and hence produces a large intellectual class. The members of that
class are not necessarily very good at intellectual work; they are
merely people who work with or transmit ideas at wholesale or retail,
the folks collectively referred to above as the New Class (also known
as the "knowledge class," the "class of semiskilled intellectuals,"
or the "chattering class").
Why should the New Class be hostile to traditional or bourgeois
society? The answer, according to the class warfare theory, is that
capitalism bestows its favors, money, and prestige on the business
class. The New Class, filled with resentment and envy, seeks to
enhance its own power and prestige by attacking capitalism, its
institutions, and its morality. It is necessary to attack from the
left because America has never had an aristocratic ethos and because
the weapons at hand are by their nature suited to the left. The
ideas are held not for their merit but because they are weapons.
There is probably a good deal to this, but it seems not quite
sufficient. For one thing, it does not account for the Hollywood
left. These are folks with no need whatever to envy the CEO of
General Motors his prestige or financial rewards. And no one, to my
knowledge, has ever classified Barbara Streisand, Jane Fonda, Ed
Asner, and Norman Lear as intellectuals.
There is, however, an additional theory. Max Weber noted the
predicament of intellectuals in a world from which "ultimate and
sublime values" have been withdrawn: "The salvation sought by an
intellectual is always based on inner need.... The intellectual
seeks in various ways, the casuistry of which extends to infinity, to
endow his life with a pervasive meaning." The subsidence of religion
leaves a void that must be filled. Richard Grenier observes that
among those intellectuals "most subject to longings for meaning, Max
Weber listed, prophetically: university professors, clergymen,
government officials . . . 'coupon clippers' . . . journalists,
school teachers, 'wandering poets.'" By "coupon clippers," I take it,
Weber meant the generations that inherit the wealth of the men who
made it, which would explain why so many foundations created by
wealthy conservatives become liberal when the children or
grandchildren take over. And for "wandering poets," read the likes of
Robert Redford and Warren Beatty. The epitome of Weber's university
professors is John Rawls, whose egalitarian theory of justice swept
the academy. Among other odd notions, Rawls laid it down that no
inequalities are just unless they benefit the most disadvantaged
members of society. There is, of course, no good reason for such a
rule, and it is a prescription for permanent hostility to actual
societies, and most particularly that of the United States, which can
never operate in that fashion. No vital society could.
What we are seeing in modern liberalism is the ultimate triumph of
the New Left of the 1960s-the New Left that collapsed as a unified
political movement and splintered into a multitude of intense,
single-issue groups. We now have, to name but a few, radical
feminists, black extremists, animal rights groups, radical
environmentalists, activist homosexual groups, multiculturalists,
People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, the American Civil
Liberties Union, and many more. In a real sense, however, the New
Left did not collapse. Each of its splinters pursues a leftist
agenda, but there is no publicly announced overarching philosophy
that enables people to see easily that the separate groups and causes
add up to a general radical left philosophy. The groups support one
another and come together easily on many issues. In that sense, the
splintering of the New Left made it less visible and therefore more
powerful, its goals more attainable, than ever before.
In their final stages, radical egalitarianism becomes tyranny and
radical individualism descends into hedonism. These translate as
bread and circuses. Government grows larger and more intrusive in
order to direct the distribution of goods and services in an ever
more equal fashion, while people are diverted, led to believe that
their freedoms are increasing, by a great variety of entertainments
featuring violence and sex. David Frum argues that the root of our
trouble is big government, but the root of big government is the
egalitarian passion, which intimidates even many conservatives. So
long as that passion persists, government is likely only to get
bigger and more intrusive.
We sometimes console ourselves with the thought that our current
moral anarchy and statism are merely one phase of a pendulum's swing,
that in time the pendulum will swing the other way. No doubt such
movements and countermovements are often observable, but it is
entirely possible that they are merely ephiphenomena that do not
affect the larger movement of the culture. After each swing the
bottom of the pendulum's arc is always further to the cultural and
political left. Certainly, in the United States, we have never
experienced a period of cultural depravity and governmental
intrusiveness to rival today's condition.
The prospects look bleak, moreover, if we reflect on the sources of
modern liberalism's components. The root of egalitarianism lies in
envy and insecurity, which are in turn products of self-pity,
arguably the most pervasive and powerful emotion known to mankind.
The root of individualism lies in self-interest, not always expressed
as a desire for money but also for power, celebrity, pleasures, and
titillations of all varieties. Western civilization, of course, has
been uniquely individualistic. Envy and self-interest often have
socially beneficial results, but when fully unleashed, freed of
constraints, their consequences are rot, decadence, and statism.
Because they arise out of fundamental human emotions, it is obvious
that individualism and egalitarianism were not invented in the 1960s.
They have been working inexorably through Western civilization for
centuries, perhaps for millennia, but they have only recently
overcome almost all obstacles to their full realization. These forces
were beneficent for most of their careers; they produced the glories
of our civilization and, freed of the restraints of the past, became
malignant only in this century. We are delighted that the restraints
that afflicted men in the classical world, in the Middle Ages, even
in the last century and much of this have been weakened or removed.
Our names for particular events and eras celebrate that movement: the
Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, our own Declaration
of Independence and Bill of Rights, the Civil Rights Movement. Though
they had other complex effects, all involved the loosening of
restraints: religious, legal, and moral. But any progression can at
last go too far.
The constraints that made individualism and egalitarianism beneficial
included economic necessity, which channeled individualism into
productive work, and religion (with its corollaries of morality and
law), which tempered self-interest and envy. It is only in this
century, and particularly in the years since World War II, that
Americans have known an affluence that frees many of us from
absorption with making a living, and it is in that same period that
the decline in religion, which began centuries ago, reached its low
point. Religious belief remains strong but seems to have a
diminishing effect on behavior. And only lately have we developed the
technologies that not only make work easier but also make the
opportunities for sensation almost boundless. We have always known
that unfettered human nature does not present an attractive face, but
it is that face that is coming into view as modern liberalism
progresses. It is difficult to imagine the constraints that could now
be put in place to do the work that economic necessity and religion
once did.
If the drive of modern liberalism cannot be blunted and then
reversed, we are also likely to see an increasingly inefficient
economy. The hedonism of radical individualism is not consistent with
the habits of work and saving that are essential to a vigorous
economy. The quotas and affirmative action that are growing in our
educational institutions and in our corporations, the dilution of the
achievement principle, coupled with the government's determination to
intervene in the economy through manifold regulations, mandates, and
taxes, will place additional burdens on productivity. Despite all we
have learned from watching other economies, perhaps we are fated to
repeat the socialist mistakes and suffer the inevitable consequences.
This is a picture of a bleak landscape, and there are many who
disagree. Optimists point out, for example, that American culture is
complex and resilient, that it contains much that is good and
healthy, that many families continue to raise children with strong
moral values. All that is true. I have been describing trends, not
the overall condition of the culture, but the trends have been
running the wrong way, dramatically so in the past thirty years. It
would be difficult to contend that, the end of racial segregation
aside, American culture today is superior to, or even on a par with,
the culture of the 1950s.
Others might argue that the elections of 1994 are an indication that
a cultural swing is taking place, that Americans have rejected huge,
regulation-happy government. That may be so, but I remember thinking
the same thing in November 1980 when the electorate chose Ronald
Reagan and defeated a clutch of the most liberal Senators. But little
long-term improvement occurred. Government now regulates more than it
did then. It was fifteen years between Reagan's first inauguration
and the Republican domination of Congress. We will know that a sea
change has happened if, fifteen years from now, government is
smaller, less expensive, and less intrusive.
Modern liberalism, moreover, maintains its hold on the institutions
that shape values and manipulate symbols. Hollywood and the network
evening news will not change their ways because of Republican
majorities. Political correctness and multiculturalism will not be
ejected from the universities by Newt Gingrich. If the reaction of
the left to Reagan's elections is any guide, modern liberalism will
become more aggressive and intolerant. In any event, even a
persistently conservative government can do little to deal with
social deterioration other than stop subsidizing it through welfare,
and it remains to be seen whether Republicans have the will to
overcome the constituencies that want welfare. Moral decay is
evident, moreover, among people who are not on welfare and never will
be.
No one can be certain of the future, of course. Cultures in decline
have, unpredictably, turned themselves around before. Perhaps ours
will too. Perhaps, ultimately, we will become so sick of the moral
and aesthetic environment that is growing in America that stricter
standards will be imposed democratically or by moral disapproval.
Perhaps we will reject a government that is controlling more and more
of our lives. A hopeful sign is the degree to which modern liberalism
and its works-political correctness, affirmative action,
multiculturalism, and the like-is coming under intellectual attack,
not merely from conservative but also from liberal intellectuals. If
its intellectual and moral bankruptcy is repeatedly exposed, perhaps
modern liberalism will die of shame.
But then again, perhaps not. Country singer and social philosopher
Merle Haggard, whose perspective is like Irving Kristol's, says that
the decade of the 1960s "was just the evening of it all. I think
we're into the dead of night now." Chances are, that is too
optimistic and the dead of night still lies ahead. For the immediate
future, in any event, what we probably face is an increasingly
vulgar, violent, chaotic, and politicized culture and, unless the
conservative resurgence of 1994 is both long-lasting and effective,
an increasingly incompetent, bureaucratic, and despotic government.
Kristol refers to himself as a cheerful pessimist. If the argument
here is even close to the mark, and if the counterattack falls short,
we had all better start working on the cheerful part.
ROBERT H. BORK is author of The Tempting of America and is currently
at work on Slouching Toward Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American
Decline, scheduled for publication by Regan Books, an imprint of
HarperCollins. An earlier version of this essay appeared in The
Neoconservative Imagination: Essays in Honor of Irving Kristol,
edited by Christopher DeMuth and William Kristol (AEI Press).
This article appeared in the June/July 1995 issue of "First Things."
To subscribe write First Things, Dept. FT, P.O. Box 3000, Denville,
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