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American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century

by Kevin Phillips

American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century Cover

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ISBN13: 9780670034864
ISBN10: 067003486x
Condition: Standard
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From America's premier political analyst, an explosive examination of the axis of religion, politics, and borrowed money that threatens to destroy the nation.

In his two most recent New York Times bestselling books, American Dynasty and Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips established himself as a powerful critic of the political and economic forces that are ruling — and imperiling — the United States. Now, Phillips takes an uncompromising view of the political coalition, led by radical religion, that is driving America to the brink of disaster.

From Ancient Rome to the British Empire, Phillips demonstrates that every world-dominating power has been brought down by a related set of causes: a lethal combination of global over-reach, militant religion, resource problems, and ballooning debt. It is this same axis of ills that has come to define America's political and economic identity in the past decade. Military miscalculations in the Middle East, the surge of fundamentalist religion, the staggering national debt, the costs of U.S. oil dependence — together these factors are undermining our nation's security, solvency, and standing in the world. If left unchecked, the same forces will bring a debt-bloated, preachy, energy-starved America to its knees. With an eye on the past and a searing vision of the future, Phillips has written a book that no American can afford to ignore.

Review:

"The title of political analyst Phillips's latest book may overstate his case (in the text, he prefers the term 'theocratic direction'), but his analysis likely will strike chords among those troubled by our current political moment. Phillips (American Dynasty) expounds upon historical parallels for each of his three subjects. In his section on 'Oil and American Supremacy,' for example, he points to Britain's post-WWI involvement in the Middle East as an analogy to Iraq, and in his section on radicalized religion, he warns of 'the pitfalls of imperial Christian overreach from Rome to Britain.' The five major measures of U.S. debt — from national to household — keep setting records, he observes in his section on 'Borrowed Prosperity,' and the real estate boom spurred by the Federal Reserve, he argues, cannot continue. Phillips identifies the escalating clout of the financial services industry and suggests that Americans should emulate policies in Asia that encourage savings and in Europe that encourage manufacturing. The lesson of the past, he warns, is that intractable national issues 'generate weak and compromising politicians or zealous bumblers.' A critic of the Bush family, Phillips sees little hope in Hillary Clinton. Expect him to make some provocative appearances on chat shows." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:

"Few political strategists have relied so extensively on history to understand the American political system as Kevin Phillips. Often identified as a former Republican strategist, Phillips has made a career of charting his disillusion with the GOP in books such as 'American Dynasty,' a blistering look at the Bush family. His latest, 'American Theocracy,' continues this scrutiny — with mixed results.

... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) 'American Theocracy' is three books in one. He argues that a 'reckless dependency on shrinking oil supplies, a milieu of radicalized (and much too influential) religion, and a reliance on borrowed money ... now constitute the three major perils to the United States of the twenty-first century.'

His first worry is oil. 'Over the last several hundred years each leading global economic power has ridden an emergent fuel resource into the pages of history,' he notes, citing Britain's 19th-century reliance on the coal industry as an example. But such reliance can prove disastrous if that resource dries up, which Phillips believes will happen. Citing the more pessimistic of geologists' projections about declining global oil reserves, he argues that our dependence on oil has ushered in an era of 'petro-imperialism' that spawned the war in Iraq.

Phillips is equally pessimistic about the emergence of a 'debt and credit-industrial complex' that endangers the U.S. economy's foundations. 'Historically,' he writes, dominance of an economy by the financial-services industry, as has now taken place in the United States, has been 'a sign of late-stage debilitation, marked by excessive debt, great disparity between rich and poor, and unfolding economic decline.' He's clear on who's to blame: the supposedly conservative Republican Party, which, rather than governing in a fiscally responsible manner, has compromised the country's future out of both 'ignorance of history and a classic onset of greed.'

But as the book's title suggests, it is the religious right that most occupies Phillips. He is not subtle in his descriptions of this group: 'The rapture, end-times, and Armageddon hucksters in the United States rank with any Shiite ayatollahs.' The GOP has been transformed into 'the first religious party in U.S. history,' Phillips argues, and it is ushering in an 'American Disenlightenment' that rejects the separation of church and state and ignores the teachings of science.

Much of Phillips' focus is on the eschatology of evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christians, including their understanding of the prophecies in the New Testament book of Revelation that describe the events leading to the world's end, events that some evangelicals believe may be foreshadowed by today's turmoil in the Middle East. 'Conservative politicians understood that for true believers their imminent rapture and the subsequent second coming of Jesus Christ were the only endgame,' Phillips argues. 'We can estimate that for 20 to 30 percent of Christians, this chronology superseded or muted other issues,' such as economic self-interest and the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But Phillips provides no source for this estimate. He also asserts, rather than proves, that such ideas animate the Bush administration — worrying, for example, about 'White House implementation of domestic and international political agendas that seem to be driven by religious motivations and biblical worldviews.'

This seems due in part to the low opinion Phillips has of born-again Christians, whom he sees as victims of a form of religious false consciousness. He argues that 'Some 30 to 40 percent of the Bush electorate, many of whom might otherwise resent their employment conditions, credit-card debt, heating bills, or escalating costs of automobile upkeep ... often subordinate these economic concerns to a broader religious preoccupation with biblical prophecy and the second coming of Jesus Christ.'

But contrary to Phillips' claims, speculation about the doomsday-era 'end times' — which has been present among certain segments of America's Christian population for more than a century — does not necessarily lead to the embrace of apocalyptic economic or foreign policy goals. It does not even guarantee sustained support for war; the percentage of white evangelical Christians who back the war in Iraq has dropped from 87 in 2003 to 68 in January 2006, according to Charles Marsh, an evangelical professor of religion at the University of Virginia. To suggest, as Phillips does, that the Bush administration, at the behest of born-again Christians, is intent on launching 'international warfare to spread the gospel' is astonishingly simplistic.

This tendency for overstatement stems in part from Phillips' reliance on questionable sources, including partisan radio networks such as Air America and books (such as Esther Kaplan's 'With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House') that are far from balanced. He also cites statements by self-appointed evangelical spokesmen like Jerry Falwell as evidence of the religious right's extreme views. But a survey conducted last year by the PBS program 'Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly' found that most evangelicals themselves view Falwell unfavorably. Phillips is more successful with his summaries of religious history, where he relies on the work of well-regarded scholars such as Mark Noll of Wheaton College and George Marsden of Notre Dame.

Yet even Phillips must admit that in terms of concrete policies, the so-called theocracy he describes has been surprisingly ineffective at turning its agenda into law. 'As of this writing,' he concedes, 'none of the half-dozen pieces of quasi-theocratic legislation drafted by the religious right ... had achieved passage, but the time could come.' In fact, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, white evangelicals' electoral influence is not on the rise; they constituted only 23 percent of the electorate in both 2000 and 2004. And the percentage of Bush voters who are white evangelicals remained constant at 36 percent in 2000 and 2004; as the Pew Center noted, Bush in 2004 'made relatively bigger gains among infrequent churchgoers than he did among religiously observant voters.'

Still, Phillips sees the religious right's influence on nearly every major decision the Bush administration has made. He pins the invasion of Iraq not on the influence of advisers such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld but on the power of 'the tens of millions of true believers viewing events through a "Left Behind" perspective.' Whether discussing oil, the economy or American faith, when Phillips abandons his thoughtful explorations of history for the present, he produces polemics ill-suited to his talents — seemingly written for an audience that wants its prejudices reaffirmed rather than examined. Years from now, historians studying the early 21st century will be able to judge how many of Phillips' dire predictions proved prescient. Lately, even the Bush administration has given lip service to the idea that the country needs to reduce its dependence on foreign oil. But in his disillusionment with the GOP, Phillips has allowed intemperance to infect his analysis. As a result, what could have been a thoughtful critique has become yet another book that caters to partisan passions.

Christine Rosen is a fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center and the author of 'My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Girlhood.'" Reviewed by Christine Rosen, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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Review:

"A dazzling treatise....Phillips's historical essay/polemic is provocative, though plenty of folks in Houston — to say nothing of Washington — won't like it at all." Kirkus Reviews

Review:

"If Phillips's political allegiance has changed over the decades, the sharpness of his observations and the historical depth and range of his arguments — as well as the wit and style gracing them — have not." Library Journal

Review:

"[A] thoughtful and somber jeremiad, written throughout with a graceful wryness. Its brilliance is so abundant even its asides are insightful...Everyone should have access to what American Theocracy so powerfully tells us about our country at this critical time." Chicago Sun-Times

Review:

"If you consider yourself a Southerner, a born-again Christian fundamentalist, an oilman, a hedge fund manager, or even simply the driver of an SUV...American Theocracy should make you hopping mad, because in it he describes with fervid cogency just why he thinks you're part of what's wrong with the country today." Baltimore Sun

About the Author

Kevin Phillips has been a political and economic commentator for more than three decades. A former White House strategist, he is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times and NPR and writes for Harper's and Time. His books include New York Times bestsellers The Politics of Rich and Poor and Wealth and Democracy.

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: timsd66, November 21, 2006 (view all comments by timsd66)
This is a timely book that addresses some pressing issues and difficulities facing America as a nation, a society, and a people. Seriously critical on the various ills of the American government and business greed, it shows that these problems could stop America's progress completely. Very good read.

But at the same time, the author has not addressed sufficiently enough on a changing world, especially due to the emergence of many poor nations like China and India. These newly emerging nations could pose serious challenges. But a better mindset is that such competitions will help the US to gain strengths, not the other way around, provided that Americans can quickly adapt to the changing global life. For this, read: 1. China's global reach; and 2. China and the new world order, both books are written by the outspoken Chinese journalist george zhibin gu, that offers sweeping insights on changing global business, trade and politics.
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: mike isberg, August 8, 2006 (view all comments by mike isberg)
Are we just cynical if we buy Kevin Phillips meticulously articulated theme? Do we really believe that energy interests have always contolled political policy? With energy developers exploiting 16th century windmills, and then 19th century coal fields, do the 21st century oil companies now pull the strings that make politicos dance?
Phillips is an informed guide if you're going to play connect-the-dots. Petroleum and automobile makers have obvious interests in perpetuating the consumption of oil, mostly as gasoline. Reading American Theocracy, one wonders if W is president now because powerful oil men needed someone (like him) to take care of oil men (like them). W was available. They could probably make him President. An oil man, sympathetic to oil men.
This book requires that you pay attention to the dotted line connections between the energy suppliers and the men they choose to govern you and me. Discouragingly, it's a straight line from the Dutch masters to George W. Bush.
400 years ago: Rembrandt.
Today: W.
How did THAT happen??
This prose reads at a brisk pace. I'd certainly recommend it to my brightest friends.
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Product Details

ISBN:: 9780670034864
Subtitle:: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21stCentury
Author:: Phillips, Kevin
Publisher:: Viking Adult
Subject:: Economic Conditions
Subject:: Political corruption
Subject:: Church and state
Subject:: International Relations - General
Subject:: Religion, Politics & State
Subject:: Government - U.S. Government
Subject:: Government - National
Publication Date:: April 2006
Binding:: Hardback
Grade Level:: General/trade
Language:: English
Pages:: 480
Dimensions:: 9.16x6.72x1.50 in. 1.57 lbs.

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