Yes. About five or six years ago, after I finished my last book which was about the Constitution, and I was sitting down talking to my publisher about...

Well, it's a play, of course, on the poem by William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming," which is a poem about a society and a culture that are unraveling....

Well, Gomorrah, of course, is a city that God destroyed because of its sinfulness. Sodom was its twin city.

In the plains, in the Middle East.

That must have been eight, nine years ago.

Well, I flipped it on and there was this naked young woman with her body oiled, lying on the ground and writhing around and sort of fondling herself....

No.

No. I just was horrified by it because it didn't occur to me. I don't know what you can do about it. But, of course, you know 20 years ago or so nothing...

I think the constraints on individual behavior have declined dramatically.

Well, that's the theme of the book, in a way. It's about liberalism; liberalism which was a very valuable thing. I don't you know, I don't say it wasn't...

How would you define liberalism?

Where does it come from, though? I mean, you say it's not all bad.

You have a footnote, page 32. You say, “In many ways I understand the '60s generation because at that stage of my life I reacted similarly. Suburban...

Yes.

What was a radical then?

Where did you get this?

You mean you just read when you were younger? That young?

You became a radical by reading?

Did you grow up in Pittsburgh?

What were your parents doing then?

Why was that?

At all?

Was that nationwide or just in Pittsburgh?

What was it like growing up in Pittsburgh?

Now what's the difference between rock 'n' roll music or Dixieland music and the music of today, in your opinion?

You know, when I was growing up, I remember my parents saying about rock 'n' roll is that, “Ooh, that stuff's awful. Why you listening to it?” I...

Well, what's the change, though, from rock 'n' roll to, say, today in the...

You have some lyrics in the book and I'm not going to read them. I'm going to let the audience read them, and I'm sure that someone will get furious...

But you've got them in the book and I'm going to shut up for a moment here so that the audience can have a chance to read these and then I'm going to...

What is that?

That's gangsta rap. And I contrast it with how much we've changed, how much our culture has changed. That's a best selling record. I mean, that's not...

I had a research assistant I didn't know about them. I'd heard there were awful things out there. And I had a research assistant who found them and...

I don't know any other way to bring home just how degraded much of popular culture has become or how far we've moved from the romantic music of the...

Occasionally; not as much as I used to. I tend to rent videos which are of old movies.

Well, I've seen enough of it. You don't have to see too many massacre scenes to know that something's going wrong out there.

Well, I think human nature is not human, you know, original sin. People, when the constraints are off, a number of them will enjoy salacious, violent...

Well, we used to do it through religion and through middle class morality -- both of which came under heavy attack in the 1960s and who've lost most...

Yes.

That's right.

Well, when you look at the student outbreaks in the '60s, a lot of them focused on Vietnam, but I think it was a focus rather than a cause. And the...

Well, I don't think maybe we shouldn't have gotten into it, but once you get into it, I think you had to do a better job of fighting it than we did.

I think it was a lowering of morale and for a long time it seemed to me I was quite wrong that it was a sign that Communism was going to continue to...

Oh, yeah. Yeah. People think that gangsta rap is black music. Nine Inch Nails is a white band and 75 percent of this stuff we're talking about, this...

Well, I think that's another sign of how much constraints have broken down. Parents must know that this stuff is going on and is being played in the...

They used to do that at one time, but apparently they don't now.

Well, I was married 28 years before my wife died, and since then I've been remarried and I've been married for 14 years.

Three.

I wish you hadn't asked that.

Well, the oldest one is about 42 or 43 and he is in an organization called the White House Writers Group. And they write speeches for they were writers...

Well, we didn't have it in the house. And to tell you the truth, our concern was more about drugs than it was about rock 'n' roll, although I think...

Well, of course, the television and movies weren't that bad. Television wasn't. And we used to watch together things like "The Avengers," if you remember...

You mean the ones in which they have “lesbian nuns from outer space” and that kind of stuff? Yes.

No. I've watched a couple of them and I've had my research assistant bring me the news about the others. But you know, I'm not going to I don't think...

Her name is Jennifer Balki Kattarine just had her first child and she's no longer my research associate because the book is done. I don't want to give...

Younger than I younger than me?

Oh, yeah. She doesn't listen to gangsta rap and she doesn't go to movies that are awful, because she's a very sound young woman.

Well, that's ... Finally she insisted I listen. You know, she got mad. And oddly enough, we had an intern as well, you know, for two or three months,...

I think it's because people are very anxious about what's happening to our culture. They're very anxious about what they see as a moral crisis in our...

It was quite a liberal audience. I think they were all probably subscribers to the New York Review of Books.

It means they're well they're far more liberal than I am.

Well, some of them were all right, but some of them were well, for example, at one point somebody mentioned Ralph Reed and some kind of a threat. And...

Well, I think two things: One was two hitches in the Marine Corps. And the Marine Corps brings you face to face with human nature and you realize it...

The end of World War II and again in Korea.

At University of Chicago. I was one of those kids who was attracted by Robert Hutchins, if you remember Robert Hutchins.

Yes. And the great books curriculum. You know, I must have -- good Lord, how many pieces of Aristotle you know, every course he would start with Aristotle,...

Well, I had thought that would be a good education. I was -- you know, I was an aspiring intellectual. Let's put it that way. As somebody said of the...

I don't know. There were people there at the same time, but I didn't know them. Dave Broder was there at the same time. I didn't know him. I guess there...

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

Well, because he's a very profound man mind and very clear and I think conservative. And he convinces you that conservativism is the correct approach....

I went to the law school at the University of Chicago and I almost became a journalist. But I didn't know any lawyers or journalists, and I had this...

Did I say that?

That's a very strong statement.

I think it means people aren't reading or thinking. I think it means that they're increasingly listen to slogans and sound bites. I think probably the...

It's easier. A lot of people don't like to read. And I'm afraid we're raising a generation of kids who don't like to read.

Oh, just three.

It was called "The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law."

That was called "The Antitrust Paradox: A Policy at War With Itself." That was an antitrust policy.

Oh, yes. I am. I'm surprised the last one did well, too. But, you know, this has done well, but, I mean, competition with something called the "The...

Yeah.

Yeah.

It doesn't bother me. Only the friendly ones come up, so that's, you know, that's fine. There is one thing that is kind of funny and that is well, it...

It means on a spectrum about whatever we're talking about, it means an extreme.

Well, I think radical egalitarianism is the change, the move to equality was really one of equality of status about legal rights and also equality of...

Well, I guess the ideal of equality of opportunity always has in it the danger that people will look at it and say, “Well, everybody hasn't come out...

Well, that's what I meant. “Radical liberalism” I take to be composed of two strands: radical individualism and radical egalitarianism.

Which, the ...

Oh, all over the place: in the White House, for one thing, but look at popular culture. You'll see radical individualism. You look at the relationship...

Oh, when I was I went in '62, left in '81 and had four years off when I was solicitor general.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, I don't know. It doesn't take that many. I mentioned, I guess, it's Morrison's Law in there: 20 percent, 25 percent of a faculty being radical activists...

Well, at first it changed. I went there in '62, and I was conservative and everybody else on the faculty was liberal.

Yes, but, you know, later there came a second one. There were about 40 of us on the faculty, and after all, there were two of us who were conservative.

Law school. And they talked about hiring a third, but they were afraid he might turn out to be a conservative, and somebody said he would tip the balance,...

Oh, my.

No. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton. Well, I wouldn't say I taught them. They were in the room well ...

Oh, I don't think any relationship with them. Robert Reich...

Probably not. I don't think Bill Clinton paid much attention to studies at class. He always was more interested in policy than he was in law. And I...

Well, I'd teach them my philosophy of constitutional law if I was teaching constitutional law. They were required to know what the law was, because...

Oh, yes.

No, I didn't really know enough about her to know that. I understand she's just resigned from the University of Oklahoma Law School. I'm not quite clear...

Yes, I hired him.

Well, I was then solicitor general, and the solicitor general is the officer of he's the top legal officer of the government. I mean, the attorney general...

Well, I suspected it wasn't mine, but I didn't really care so long as he would do the office work, because when I took over the office, it was not exactly...

Well, I think today it's because they remember how terrible it was when they were students. But in general, I think intellectuals are more likely to...

Well, I think I cite the reason in there that Max Weber gave, the German sociologist, which is that the intellectual is a person by the way, an intellectual...

Sure. People have a very hard time putting up with it and there are various ways of coping with boredom. You know, some of it is to plunge into this...

Only when I'm listening to some speech.

I read a lot.

Well, there's quite a gap. I mean, some of the stuff that I cited here you'd find me reading, which is quite serious literature, non fiction literature....

Yed.

Yed.

"Mystery Theater." No, I sometimes move around. I've seen your program a number of times ... "Mystery Theater," "Murder, She Wrote," I'm afraid.

Not much. Not much. My musical taste sort of is 1940s.

That must have been '50s and '60s.

No.

I didn't care about carrying one around and listening to music.

Well, there's a variety of factors that led to that '60s generation of radical students and that was merely one. And as a matter of fact, I don't think...

Ah, yes. That's on Internet. That's a category. And they have a variety of things under alt.sex, which is alternative sex. Particularly horrifying was...

No, no. I don't know how to work the Internet yet.

Yeah, no, no, I did that research. I found it written up. But they even have instructions about how you lurk outside a girls' school, bundle a 7 year...

Well, if you can, I would censor it. I say when I say “if you can,” there may be a problem with technology. Somebody said technology is on the side...

Yes.

No.

No. No, I know ...

When I read what?

Well, I knew that no, I knew that that would get people.

Well, because censorship's has become a dirty word. It's interesting because we lived with censorship in this country for most of our national existence,...

I don't know. I've read some reviews that suggested to me they haven't read much of the book at all.

The same way you start with any law, you know. Your elected representatives would write a code about what is obscene and can be banned. An executive...

The V chip I don't think is going to help a lot. For one thing, a lot of parents aren't going to use it. And for another, I think it will give people...

As far as I know, it hasn't done any good. Kids say they can get into any movie they want to.

Well , you know, I can't predict the future. All I can say is if we continue on the lines we are, I think we'll live in a very coarse, violent, divisive,...

You say in your book that this is a secular country and we've had people here that say this is the most religious country in the world. Which is it?

What's your...

In your lifetime, are there periods where you've been more religious than other?

Where are you now?

When were you the least religious?

But what if you don't mind me asking, what's your religion?

Your experience about the Supreme Court I mean, how many years has it been now since you had to go through those hearings that we carried?

What's the residual for you when you look back on those nine years?

But you can see that now with Justices Scalia and Thomas. They sit there, dissent, dissent, dissent. And, of course, some of Scalia's dissents are really...

Oh, no. No, no, I wouldn't have been able to write this book or the prior book.

Two reasons. One is that judging is a full time occupation, so, you know, I probably wouldn't have had the energy to write the book and I certainly...

In my office and at home.

I'm in the American Enterprise Institute and they're over at 1157 T Street.

On my good days, you know.

Oh, I have a very irregular schedule.

No. I have to have a project. That's all.

Well, I didn't pace myself and I did most of the writing whenever I had free time. Now I was doing other things, too. I was giving talks around the...

Computer.

Well, I'm pretty fast and I touch type, and it comes out pretty fast. Sometimes when you look at it and it looks pretty bad, but you have to go back...

I'm not very happy with courts in general, not just the Supreme Court.

The courts over time have always responded to the dominant class in the society. In the early part of this century and the latter part of the last century,...

How long were you on the US Appeals Court here?

Did you pay attention to the outside culture when you were I mean, did that affect you, do you think, when you were here?

Would you write strong opinions at the US Court of Appeals here and then would your fellow judges react to you when you were critical?

Was that hard to take or ...

Anybody every say anything to you personally to stop writing these strong things?

Do you think there will ever be television in the Supreme Court?

Do you change when you're in front of a camera like this than when you're normally speaking to people?

But, I mean, if you're out making a speech and you know there's a television camera in the room, does that change your ...

I wrote a note here at the top to ask you about. Rush Limbaugh started promoting this book about the day it came on the market. Did that have any impact...

Did you get feedback on it? I mean, did you hear about that?

The people that endorse this book are Robert George, Bill Bennett, John Cardinal O'Connor, Senator Chuck Grassley, Ralph Reed, Michael Novak and Gertrude...

Married to Irving Kristol?

Here comes the Tocqueville question. We ask this all the time because so many books have Alexis de Tocqueville and "Democracy in America" in it. You...

You find at least in my experience -- you find that people either know a lot about him or nothing about him. When did you ...

Yeah. When were you introduced to him?

Did you write this book for money or for impact in the society, or both?

Do you have any sense how many it's going to sell or how many printings you've had so far?

But a couple hundred thousand books.

Did your other sell anything like that?

When you go out and speak to groups, what do they want to hear from you?

Do you have some?

Is there one that always works?

Would you like to tell us one?

The last couple minutes what was the spirit of Port Huron?

You said it was an obscure meeting, how did you find it?

A couple other things. Another word you see a lot in your book is “nihilism” and you say here it was the order of the decade. What is nihilism?

Another comment: “Multiculturalism is a lie.” What is multiculturalism? And why is it a lie?

Some more odds and ends. “Modern liberals try to frighten Americans by saying that religious conservatives, quote, ‘want to impose their morality...

John Kenneth Galbraith, the left wing intellectual “Take John Kenneth Galbraith as a prototype, can go on selling defunct ideas for decades. The forces...

Is he a friend of yours.

All right. One more. You went into a friend's office during the Clarence Thomas hearings and you quoted yourself as saying, "Television is showing the...

Do you want to tell us who your friend is?

Here is the cover of the book. And our guest has been Judge Robert H. Bork. "Slouching Towards Gomorrah." We thank you very much for joining us.