When I decided to read Skipping Towards Gomorrah, I thought I’d better pick up Slouching Towards Gomorrah too, in order to be fair and balanced and all that (side note: apparently the phrase is a reference to a book of Joan Didion’s essays, titled Slouching Towards Bethlehem, but I had to draw the line about how many books to include in this essay somewhere, even if Joan Didion insists on intruding herself on every book review I write). Unfortunately, I grossly overestimated my tolerance for Robert Bork’s brand of morality, and so I only made it through the first ten pages and even at that, felt like I’d been repeatedly beaten over the head with a hard-cover copy of Atlas Shrugged for hours. Bork – the only Supreme Court nominee whose last name has become a verb, that I know of, although I’d be curious to know what it would mean to “Ginsberg” someone – is pretty much a jerk, which I knew, but he’s also an inconsistent and confusing jerk, which was more than I could take. The major complaints he lays out in (the first ten pages of) his introduction are that liberalism is 1)too egalitarian (think affirmative action) and 2)too individualistic (think legalization of marijuana). To counter these trends, of course, he recommends that the right-thinking citizens of the country press for it to be, respectively, more individualistic (merit alone should determine college admission) and more collectivist (the right of the many to protect their children from drugs should supercede the right of the few to get high). I’m not quite sure how you’re supposed to figure out which side to be on, unless you read some comprehensive listing by a ratified neo-conservative. Honestly, the whole mess made me really sympathetic to the libertarians who, if nothing else, are vehemently consistent in their reasoning.
(Ten pages of) Bork’s book also made me increasingly appreciative for Savage’s funny, light, and just-a-touch meaty book. Committed to the idea that the founding fathers really meant it when they promised us “the pursuit of happiness,” Savage chases down happiness – or at least takes a good long look at other peoples’ happiness – in the form of the seven deadly sins: going gambling to get a look at greed, or spending some time at a swingers’ convention to understand lust. On the whole, it’s a meditation on whether anybody else gets hurt if a few million Americans decide to pursue some happiness, from being fat to shooting guns to going to a gay pride parade (high on ecstasy, natch).
And if there’s one thing that Savage is careful of, it’s hypocrisy. Of course, he has the advantage of having read and been disgusted by Bork’s book, but his chapter on gun ownership in particular recognizes how difficult it is to draw the line between personal-freedoms-that-make-you-happy and personal-freedoms-that-imperil-everyone-else (of course, he’s much more concerned about people’s safety than their everlasting soul). Savage is not an unrestricted hedonist, but he’s clear about his logic. And even if he hadn’t been, his book is a lot more fun than Bork’s.