American jurist, b. Pittsburgh. He received his law degree from the Univ. of Chicago in 1953, and served as professor of law at Yale Univ. (1962-73, 1977-81), U.S. Solicitor General (1973-77), and judge for federal Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (1982-88). In 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court. An outspoken conservative, Bork was widely reviled for [what was held to be (and was, I believe)] his ... opposition to advancement in civil liberties. After lengthy and acrimonious confirmation hearings, he was ultimately voted down by the Senate, 58-42. Bork resigned from the federal court in Feb., 1988, and became a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
[From infoplease.com encyclopedia <http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0808374.html>]
The excerpt given in the reader does not provide much insight on Bork's position; it mainly involves his citing of a number of problems in current U.S. society and his argument that they arise because of a liberal undermining of traditional values embodied in "conventional, middle-class[, bourgeois] culture" (180A/4). Later he implies (through his condemnation of "rootless hedonism") that these traditional values are religion, morality, law, hard [preferably physical] work, and fear of want [sic].
His specific (ideological) criticism is of two trends or philosophies: liberal individualism (meaning the classical liberal impulse to restrict only those behaviors that harm others, leaving untouched behaviors like, say, prostitution and drug use that are either consensual or harm only the user) and liberal egalitarianism (meaning what he takes to be the liberal impulse to see all inequalities as unjust). The first of these undercuts traditional morality, including religion and obedience to the law; the second of these undercuts both the incentive to hard work and the associated fear of want.
Note that he does not provide much of an argument why traditional morality is good, which is why I see his ideas as coming out of a law-maintaining perspective, not a law-creating one.
1996
Robert Bork is not Edmund Burke, even though both are considered conservative thinkers.
Bork's 1987 nomination to the Supreme Court; "Borked" [meaning, according to Republicans, someone who is opposed because of his politics instead of his qualifications for the position]
What's Bork's point? American is declining because of modern liberalism.
Evidence of deterioration
The cause: modern liberalism. [He really means postmodernism: a recognition of so the social construction of reality, which he equates to the "abandonment of reason".]
Classical liberalism was o.k. — "tempered by opposing authorities and traditions" [178/4/-3]
But classical liberalism has fallen prey to two modern radicalisms:
In the face of these forces, religion, the media, and the legal system all become soft.
In short, the problem is that we are regarding as good some things that are actually [self-evidently, according to Bork] bad.
Traditional values, but no justification
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