Use this glossary as a “decoder ring” while reading Bork, who repeats these phrases as building blocks for his broader diagnosis of cultural and political decline.
Understanding Bork’s definition of modern liberalism is crucial to grasping his critique of cultural change, thereby highlighting the importance of core ideas.
Bork uses this umbrella label for a late-20th-century ideological coalition that, in his view, reshaped Law, education, the media, and public morality—often led by cultural and institutional elites.
Radical egalitarianism
A push toward equality of outcomes (not merely equal opportunity), which Bork argues pressures institutions to standardize results and treat differences in achievement as injustice.
Radical individualism
A cultural ethic that reduces limits on personal gratification, elevating autonomy above traditional moral constraints; Bork sees it as a driver of permissiveness in sex, entertainment, and social norms.
Cultural elites
A recurring category in Bork’s argument: academics, journalists, jurists, entertainment figures, and foundation professionals who—he claims—set national norms and define what is “acceptable.”
Moral relativism
The idea that moral claims are subjective or situational, Bork argues, is that relativism dissolves shared standards, leaving only preference and power to arbitrate public norms.
Politicization (and “Balkanization”) of culture
Bork’s claim that cultural life becomes organized into rival identity blocs and ideological camps, weakening consensus and making institutions battlegrounds rather than mediators.
Judicial activism (Bork’s critique)
Courts—especially the Supreme Court—are portrayed as agents of cultural change, issuing decisions that (in his view) track elite ideology more than constitutional text or democratic consent.
Congressional override amendment (proposed remedy)
Bork proposes an amendment allowing Congress to override federal court decisions by majority vote—an idea critics highlight as sweeping and potentially destabilizing for rights protections.
“Collapse of popular culture”
Bork’s shorthand for the claim that entertainment and mass media increasingly celebrate transgression, weaken restraint, and normalize coarseness—serving as moral instruction by repetition.
Censorship (as a cultural defense)
Bork argues for tighter constraints on obscenity and violent content; reviewers note that he treats censorship as a plausible remedy, while opponents warn about who sets the standards and how to protect free expression.
“Killing for convenience.”
Bork’s morally charged phrase for abortion and certain end-of-life practices; he frames these as evidence of a culture shifting toward instrumental views of life and personhood.
The “politics of sex” / radical feminism (as he uses it)
Bork groups strands of modern feminism into a broader argument about sexual politics reshaping institutions and norms; the phrase signals his view that sex becomes a primary arena for ideology.
The “decline of intellect.”
He claims that universities and schools trade rigor for ideology, self-esteem therapeutics, or politicized curricula, reducing standards and weakening civic reasoning.
The “trouble in religion.”
Bork argues that weakening religious authority removes a significant source of shared moral constraint; for him, religion is less a private comfort than a public cultural scaffolding.
“Fraternity” (the missing third virtue)
Near the end, Bork gestures toward a longing for social solidarity—community obligations and mutual responsibility—as a counterweight to atomized individualism and enforced egalitarianism.
“Gomorrah” (the governing metaphor)
The title frames decadence as a destination: Bork adapts Yeats’s apocalyptic imagery to argue America is drifting not toward renewal, but toward moral disintegration.