SOURCE: “The Deepening Darkness,” in Modern Age, Vol. 21, No. 2, spring, 1977, pp. 211-12.

In the following eview of Twilight of Authority, Gow outlines Nisbet's argument that centralized government is sapping vitality from social institutions such as the family, which are crucial to protecting liberty and forming full social lives.

Decadence, according to the philosopher, C. M. Joad, is the loss of an object. For Russell Kirk, one of the finest social critics of our times, decadence is pervasive moral and political disorder in society, which results from disorder in the soul. Robert Nisbet, Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University and author of Twilight of Authority, believes that Western Civilization and, in particular, America is in a state of decadence; he discerns America's decline in such indices as the decay of values; the deification of the self, of egoism; the erosion of patriotism; the militarization of society...