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

by Kevin Phillips

An explosive examination of the coalition of forces that threatens the nation, from the bestselling author of American Dynasty In his two most recent bestselling books, American Dynasty and Wealth and Democracy , Kevin Phillips established himself as a powerful critic of the political and economic forces that rule—and imperil—the United States, tracing the ever more alarming path of the emerging Republican majority’s rise to power. Now Phillips takes an uncompromising view of the current age of global overreach, fundamentalist religion, diminishing resources, and ballooning debt under the GOP majority. With an eye to the past and a searing vision of the future, Phillips confirms what too many Americans are still unwilling to admit about the depth of our misgovernment.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Religion, History, Economics, Political Science, American History

462 pages, Paperback

First published March 21, 2006

Reviews

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every so often I get the craving to read political texts. The problem with this urge is that I have no interest in picking up the edited transcript/ghost written crap put out by Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly, the frankly embarrassing Dinesh D’Souza, or the “Look at me! Look at me! Look at MEEEE!” shrillness that passes for the corporeal form of Ann Coulter. That’s what’s on offer on the right side of the spectrum.

Too frequently when I read a lefty’s political book of any kind, I find it dully confirming a great number of my already held prejudices and regurgitating things I read on the blogs months ago. Rarely do any of these books enlighten or educate me in any real fashion. Oh, I may pick up an anecdote here or there or may recall one or two unfamiliar facts to buttress my earlier beliefs, but it’s hardly the same as learning. What a revelation then Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy, a book I entirely put into the category of prejudice bolstering anti-fundamentalist GOP tract.

I had always meant to read the book, the conjunction of religion and power an all too often unacknowledged aspect of American politics. By this I mean, people may discuss how Republicans court the religious right and kowtow to the fundamentalist line on all sexual matters (gays, women’s rights, abortion), but exactly how much of the GOP platform is dictated by the Religious Right is hardly ever outright discussed (outside of the same mentioned lefty blogs).

When the author ranks fundamentalist Jewish and Christian sects on the same level as Jihadism and refers to the GOP as America’s first religious party, you’d be tempted to believe that the author was a Democrat, or even an unaffiliated liberal. How surprising then to find that Phillips was a member of the Nixon Administration and author of the seminal electoral text The Emerging Republican Majority. He has also written extensively on a range of historical subjects from the presidency of William McKinley to the English Civil War, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War in The Cousins War.

Phillips’ range of comparison is convincing, illustrating the collapses of the Roman Empire, the Spanish Hapsburg Empire, the Dutch naval empire, and the well-known British Empire with intricate detail, demonstrating how financial strain, badly managed resources, and religious intolerance were sizable factors in each one, aggravating already existing problems.

Which is to say, Phillips brings an impressive historical scope to his analysis of where the American Empire is headed. In short, disaster. Having made the case of how those problems were instrumental, he then bluntly lays into modern American political culture with bruising clarity and straightforwardness demonstrating over the past several decades how get-rich-quick attitudes and short-term gain have sacrificed long-term stability, most commonly abetted by the Republican Party and their corporate backers and Taliban-like fundie ground troops.

Perhaps the most common criticism against Phillips’ book is the eye-rolling toward the notion that Bush and the GOP lead us into the Iraq quagmire based on oil dreams. It always strikes me as patently ridiculous that anyone could argue that other motivations were as strong as that single one. After all, weapons of mass destruction and democracy fostering could be even more strongly argued for North Korea or Iran, yet neither of those is sitting on oil reserves the size of Iraq’s.

Part of how Phillips demolishes arguments that counter the rather obvious one he makes — oil was the primary and overwhelming motive for war in Iraq — is to consult the historical record. Even his detractors can’t argue that the man is not thorough. In considering the American economy’s relationship with oil, Phillips returns to the industry of whaling and starts from there, building his case for the energy industry’s outlandish power from the ground up. In considering imperial designs on the Fertile Crescent, he returns to Rome, though most of his global focus rests on the British Empire and their colonial inheritors of hegemony.

“Think of Iraq as a military base with a very large oil reserve underneath,” Phillips quotes an oil analyst from a couple of years ago. “You can’t ask for better than that.” And while Iraq remains a central front in this particular petro-war (it being of significant note that in 2000 Baghdad switched from the dollar standard for oil export to the Euro, a move reversed post-invasion), Phillips points out the recent clustering of semi-temporary American military bases and/or the presence of U.S. military advisors near Kazakhastan, Colombia, the Caucasian republic of Georgia, Senegal, Ghana, Mali, Sao Tome, Indonesia, the Strait of Malaca, the Balkans, and any other region that just so coincidentally happens to run along oil and gas pipelines or be possessed of sizable oil fields. Such maps, one historian notes, bear a striking resemblance to the global span of imperial Britain’s protected collieries.

It is one of the book’s ironies to learn that the likely greatest failure of the British Empire was its heavy dependence on coal and its refusal to adjust its coal-based infrastructure and mindset. This spectacular myopia lead them to sort of overlook and underestimate petroleum. King Coal would always rule, they believed.

Such mindsets were behind another feature of declining empire, the overtaking of actual manufacturing as a base of the economy in favor of finance-based speculative markets. Heavy borrowing, stock-trading, futures markets, all of these non-productive types of wealth accumulation and management have come to dominate the American business sector, with solid manufacturing jobs being shipped out to slave-wage-labor third-world sweatshops. As wealth becomes more and more speculative and less and less based on solid material growth, empires overextend themselves and the merest of financial catastrophes balloon.

This is well illustrated by Phillips’ consideration of personal, corporate, and government debt, handily summarized by American’s net savings for the first time in history showing a negative balance. We now, as a nation and as family units, spend more than we earn. While it’s clear Phillips abhors this practice at the individual level, he is ruthless in his excoriation of the architects of such economies, epitomized in the person of former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan. Phillips stops just short of suggesting Greenspan should be burned in effigy in the streets or tarred and feathered, but such notions probably aren’t far from his mind.

But nowhere in the book is Phillips more scathing and venomous than in lambasting the hucksterism of the Religious Right, a group he compares unfavorably with radical Muslim clerics, as well as frauds and opportunists looking to cash in on the credulous. Tying this into the petroleum dilemmas, Phillips takes us inside what the Coors Beer family fortune has wrought, the staffing of “the principal units charged with resources stewardship (the Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of the Interior and Energy)” with cronies from:

the GOP’s business-religious axis: the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, the Mountain States Legal Foundation, the Council for National Policy…, and, more marginally, the Coalition on Revival (bridging the theological gap between the rapture believers and the Christian Reconstructionists who believe a theocratic type of government must be built before Jesus will return).


As if you needed a better reason not to drink the Coors family’s shitty beer.

With the third group in that category, the Council for National Policy, Phillips takes special attention toward Tim LaHaye, a hilariously inept favorite here on this site, and quotes one analysis of the novels LaHaye “co-wrote” with draftsman Jerry B. Jenkins as “And God so loved the world that He sent World War Three.” Phillips considers his influence to have “warped the Republican party” which is putting it mildly to say the least and heaps scorn on this sizable GOP constituency. You can almost hear the sneer when he notes that such among the faithful believe as soon as a sperm fertilizes an egg — “pop” god slips in a soul.

That Phillips is a Republican attacking Republicans does not mean that he has suddenly become sympathetic to liberal ideas; he merely embraces science over religious tenets in decision making. He also doesn’t appear to have any reactions to the hot button issues of conservative fundamentalists (abortion, evolution, climate change, sex education). It’s refreshing to hear a GOP man discuss favorably how union labor lifted the American population by and large into the middle class, whereas today’s current money markets are pushing in the opposite direction. It is likewise a sign of his rationality that he finds fault with the Reagan years lust for deregulation which allowed for all kinds of economic mischief.

To read American Theocracy is to have your eyes opened repeatedly with an erudition more entertaining political tracts lack. When the author mixes these three dangerous strands of his book together, the result promises a combustible future on this continent.

Phillips has no great praise for Democrats in general, but to hear his concerns, his favorable impressions, his economic insights and views on what is needed to save America from ruinous collapse, you’d think you were hearing someone slightly to the right of Ralph Nader.

And if that ain’t a sign of how warped the Republican Party has become, I don’t know what would demonstrate it better.

[Public Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third book I've read by one-time Republican wunderkind Kevin Phillips. Not a bad entry at all. Here, we have one of the architects of Nixon's Southern Strategy bemoaning the Frankenstein monster that he helped create with the ascendence of the Christian Right. There is a lot of value in this book, but I certainly don't agree with the author 100%.

Phillips correctly identifies three of the main power centers of the modern GOP: Finance, Oil, and churchgoing Christians. In terms of realpolitik Phillips is on target when he points to the vast influence exercised by the oil industry and the FIRE sector, especially during the Bush-era (when this book was written). However, I take issue with his over-exaggeration of the influence of conservative Christians. It is beyond question that this voter base is hugely important to the Republican Party, but the behavior of the second Bush Administration causes a great deal of hand-wringing by Phillips over worries that Christian theocrats were taking a larger hand in guiding American policy. This is way overblown. The tail does not wag the dog, as Phillips seems to be arguing here. Christians are an important power base but don't come anywhere near to directing policy choices like the other examples in this book - oil and finance.

This was the main weakness and my chief complaint about this book. It's understandable considering the point in time when it was written in the mid 2000s. But I think Chris Hedges comes much closer to the real source of worry in his book American Fascists. The real problem, in my opinion, is the way right-wing politics is trying to mold American Christians into a pro-capitalist army that will mindlessly support the objectives of American business, not that American Christians will somehow strong-arm American policies in a more theocratic direction. Phillips wasted a lot of time cataloging the rise and fall of different Christian denominations in American history to no real end. I wish he would have concentrated more on the interplay between American Christians and American business.

The sections on oil and finance were much stronger and propelled this from a three-star to a four-star review. The oil section was chockablock with fascinating details about the anxieties in the oil industry about peak oil throughout the 1990s. There was a lot of fresh material here (to me) about why the Bush Administration would have been gunning for Iraq long before 9-11 for reasons that had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction or the War on Terror. This makes for a very strong anti-war argument coming from a very unexpected place.

The section on finance was fascinating for its historical emphasis on past empires in Spain, the Netherlands, and Britain. Phillips spins some really startling parallels between the rise and fall of those empires and where the US sits on our own empire timeline - especially where finance is concerned. He also draws parallels with past empires' religious fervor that I think were interesting but mostly academic. Still, telescoping through history in this way was my favorite part of the book. His warnings in this section also proved quite prophetic once the economic crisis of 2008 finally emerged. Here is an author writing in 2005-2006 talking about Collateralized Debt Obligations and Credit Default Swaps before any of the rest of us really knew what was coming. Nice!

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I try to put bottom line first, With American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century Hardcover by former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips, some preliminaries will provide context. It looks like no one has been reading this book for about 5 years. This is a shame because it predicts things that the author may not have intended to predict. For example, yesterday’s Supreme Court decision made on little more than speculation over what might be requested of a web designer. Further many criticize the book for its focus on Republican politics. This is not because he is so protective towards the Democrats or loving of President Clinton. He is dismissive towards both. He is most worried about people he had considered as hisown. No where does he embrace Democratic policy. Indeed the book is dedicated to his fellow Republicans. He is focused on Republican motives and decision-making. If you buy a book about baking cakes it is not biased because it rarely mentions the baking of pies. Too much is made of the irrational suggestion that he type casts all Southerner, or all religious fundamentalists, but the facts take him where he goes and the shoes fit whomever they fit. How you chose to count yourself is your business.

For example, I am a Southerner, born and bred. I wonder at the new crapola belief that the Civil War south was solid grey. Such that the removal of the statues of rebellious general is suppression of history. Ask, if those loud voices will let you, where in their home town are the monuments to the loyal citizens and forefathers, who, in the hundreds and thousands wore blue uniforms? Watch as their faces go blank. Remember that the rebellion had been remembered as brother against brother. This among other things exclude me from the southerner who are of interest to Mr. Phillips’ hypothesis. Incidentally many of the ones that interest the author, are long dead, while their influence is not. To finish the thought, I am not dead yet.

To the book itself. With American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century is objectively an uneven production. Mr. Phillips wears his prejudices openly and backs them more by repetition than by evidence. Entire section can be muddled, poorly organized and written. I rated this as a four-star read, but only by rounding.

Much of what is says about oil was hardly new when it was published(2006). The advent of fracking ( a technology unknown or under appreciated by the author), has bought the American oil economy some time. He also failed to credit the growth in the use of renewable energy as yet another factor that is stretching out the jobs and share-holders paying bills with oil money. That oil fields become exhausted remains a fact and prediction of a pending collapse in that direction is at worst premature. The day comes when carbon-based fuels will in some sequence, become primary imported, manifestly poisonous or run out. As for the notion that oil was the real reason for the US Iran war, the case is tenable, but not as proven as Phillis would have us believe. European and American efforts to control Middle East politics, in large part due to oil has a very solid base in history, but will not come as news.

The case against American Debt, government also seems a tad stale. There was something ‘off’ about The post 9/11 Presidential urging that Americans could show their patriotism by over spending, but the was from a president seriously concerned that fear would keep people home. A POV never considered by Mr. Phillips. Debt based economy reads like a national level Ponzi scheme. Infinite, uninterrupted growth is not tenable. In fact, shortly after the publication of American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, the American, and world economy did collapse. Debt being at least a part of the problem. Remember people walking away from homes ‘upside down’ in dept?

Mr Phillips argues strongly that the financial industry, a term that should never have come into existence, was under regulated. Failure built into the financial industry as much as debt under-wrote the collapse. Most of us understand this as true, but Republicans still deny that banks should be run by bankers, or that they should have some ‘skin;’ in the game as they authorize loans.

It is the middle third of the book that was of greatest interest to me. Up until a few decades ago religious headline focused on the weakness of churches and falling religious attendance. Depending on your POV this was terrible, or the hope of a country freed of religious based whatever it was that religious based reasoning was doing to the body politic.

Kevin Phillis , using solid research, meaningful numbers and a refusal to be silenced by the notion that calling out one, necessarily sullies all made what was for me very insightful history . With his POV much of the newly empowered religious right becomes easier to understand.

Historically, main stream churches tend to become less demanding and more open to other points of view. Europe had its taste of religious war and found The Enlightenment much more to its taste. Consequently the more fundamentalist, ‘pure’ religious sought refuge in, America. As parent branches were perceived to be ‘mellowing out’ New sub-sects and grouping branched out. America has become the home to vast numbers of dissenting religious groupings, large and small, all determined to live a way of life more pure then the lessor, and therefor condemned majority. As of the early 2000’s the size and political voice of what may have been a religiously motivated minority is a matter of ever closer numbers.

Mr Phillips would have us believe that this cycle of religious political action is unique to America, but the Dar Al Islam, The Mohammetan works is also replete with cyclical calls to a purer religious past. Each with important, and sometimes violent pushes outcomes . This ‘Unique to America’ aspect is more nuanced as for all of his warnings, Mr Phillips relates America to cautionary parallels with the eventual failure of the Spanish./Hapsburg Empire, the Dutch and later British empires that preceded the emergence of American as a dominate world power.

While the religious right claims to best understand the founding fathers, Phillips (among others) is aware that the American Revolution was lead and peopled by that portion of the colonies with the least religious motivation. The population least likely to support the revolution lived, in the southern colonies and were the most Protestant, and fundamentalist believers.

What Kevin Phillips hints at and we seem to be realizing is that after decades of Republican, often cynical playing to the religious -right has yielded a voting, highly motivated, believing population demanding policies in accord with the kinds of policies previously hinted at and never delivered. Republican strategy has sown the winds of a Christian driven voter, with it and (again), Republican engineered Left/Right divisiveness, the country is being challenged on many long-standing notions. Church/State as a wall not to be crossed foremost.

My bottom line, here give at the bottom, is that; American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century is a book that for all its faults is a Republican insiders view of that speak to things happening now. The author is not in all things correct, but things we may not know and dots we have not connected are import if we are to understand at least some of how American politics, and Republican politics in particular got us to 2023.

[Gwynneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally, this book was intended more for self-education on U.S. oil policy under the current president and its potential influence on the 2008 presidential elections, rather than for specific cemetery research. However, the author has built an historically informative and exhaustively researched “pyramid” comparing the rise and fall of several foundational empires (ancient Rome, Spain, the Dutch, Victorian & pre-1914 England that proved useful to this researcher) and detailing how those same character faults are now seen in the United States.

The author has summarized seven typical historical precedents causing the sunset of these nations and rather than attempting my own poor re-elaborations of his points, I prefer to let him “speak”.

From the Introduction (pp xlv-xlvi) - Kevin Phillips:

“…By early 2006, as I began to outline my book-tour presentation – the arguments I would make in bookstores, articles, broadcast programs, and other venues – I found myself coming up with a list of six or seven transformations of circumstances that were common to most of the nations on my list and seemed to be intensifying for the United States under the George W. Bush administration. They fell into sequence as follows:

1. A popular sense of national decay, economic, moral or patriotic: Although ordinary people and progressives used to worry more about the decline of jobs or economic fairness, while conservatives measured the loss more in patriotism, family virtue, and morality

2. An intensification of religion: Often it took form as a global missionary impetus (Spain) or evangelical drive (Britain), intolerance and persecution by a powerful state church (Rome, Spain) or an attempt to recapture an earlier, vital patriotic religion (Holland).

3. Conflict between faith and science: Faith could squelch science, as in the later days of Rome (libraries and astronomical observatories were closed) or Catholic Spain, and 19th century Britain saw the first round of combat between scientific Darwinism and the Church.

4. Imperialism and military overreach: Rome trained many of the peoples on its frontiers and eventually couldn’t defend those boundaries; Spain overreached globally, but especially in Europe where it spent itself fighting for Catholicism in the Thirty Years War; the Dutch overreached both in maritime commercial globalization and the expensive wars fought between 1688 and 1713; Britain unraveled from the enormity of the empire it had to defend and the drain of two world wars (1914-1918 and 1939-1945).

5. The burden of excessive debt: Not comparable in Rome, but devastating for spendthrift and fiscally inept Spain; the 18th century Dutch let themselves become a nation of rentiers whose upper classes lived off interest while industry and day-to-day commerce declined; Britain, the world’s largest creditor in 1914, was broken by the debt and economic transformation of the two world wars.

6. The decline of industry and the rise of finance: A repeating pattern…Britain worried about becoming another Holland, but did in fair measure tread the same path.

7. Idiosyncratic fuel and energy successes: applicable only to the more modern economic societies. The Dutch rose to world economic leadership through genius with wind and water, and could not maintain commercial hegemony under a new international fuel regime. Coal did the same thing for Britain until the rise of oil-powered industry and military forces gave the edge to the oil-favored United States.”

All of these points are thoroughly researched to reveal how and why these historical trends have either been overlooked or simply disregarded due to our current obsession with short term, immediate results, immediate feedback, impatience with delayed gratification, and wanting only the here and now.

An excellent book highly recommended for those who are not just readers, but also thinkers.

[Barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Phillips is a republican who served in the Nixon administration. I am a life-long democrat; nevertheless, I enjoyed his measured comments when he spoke on Morning Edition on NPR. Like many people, I found Mr. Bush to be a less than insightful president, so I thought that a book by Mr. Phillips, critical of the Bush administration, would be an analysis by the loyal opposition. Not so. Like so many Americans who have tired of divisive political rhetoric, I wanted to read the opinions and ideas of someone from the opposite point of view. I was amazed to find so much with which I agreed. Mr. Phillips compares the economic practices of late twentieth century America to other nations that committed in the past the same foolish blunders - Holland, Spain, and England. His knowledge of economic history is enlightening and comprehensive. Beyond this history discussion, I was pleased to see that I could find common ground with him, for his concern seems to be out need to reach out to others, not define life narrowly and insist that others are wrong.

[Joe Stack · Rating 4 out of 5]

The subtitle says it all. This is a provocative, disturbing, persuasive, critical examination of oil and religion, and hereditary politics and capitalism. Phillips lays out his thesis in the Preface and then manages in a very readable fashion support what he lays out in the Preface. There are members of the GOP along with fundamentalists and evangelicals who may be offended or disagree with his analysis, but he provides thorough support to his positions.

[Matt · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to let this book help me make the argument that I (and a ton of other liberals) want to make: that George Bush the second is a religious freak who has his eyes on oil control and who manipulated the south and the general electorate through "culture war" to rig and steal his way to the presidency.

And it did. But not on its own merits.

the problem is, its not written terribly well. Philips knows his facts but he doesn't seem to know what to do with them. He just kind of throws them at the reader while not arguing per se. A sequence of data is not persuasion.

I agreed pretty much completely with his premise and his conculsions, but it would not be enough on its own merits if I weren't already inclined that way myself.

Therefore, I cannot in good faith give it the full props. Three stars will have to do, and two is a definite temptation.

O hell.....

[Ivonne Rovira · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm pretty well read; therefore, I wasn't surprised that I was familiar with much of what was in Kevin Phillips' latest book when it came to the American theocracy. What did surprise me was how much I learned about the history and politics of American oil and about the inner workings of Wall Street. I was flabbergasted!

American Theocracy is a hefty tome, but it's well worth reading. You'll look at tomorrow's newspaper headlines in a whole different light after reading this book.

[Mikey B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful indictment (if sometimes strident) of the Bush administration presidencies (both father and son) and the Republican party as well. The author takes on three areas – oil, religion and the economy.

Religion permeates the other two. The tenants of Fundamentalism are uninterested in alternative sources of energy or depletion of oil reserves. They also are not concerned with economic collapse. Mr. Phillips was prescient on the impending economic collapse of 2008.

By gaining the complete adherence of the religious right which makes up possibly 40% of the U.S. population the Republican Party has narrowed its focus to religious and Biblical tenets to the detriment of education, climatic change, energy alternatives and energy reduction. The religious right also supported the disastrous war in Iraq – along with other liberal groups it must be added.

Mr. Phillips points to the abundant Biblical references in the speeches of George W. Bush. He also makes an interesting correlation between car size and fuel efficiency – the bigger and the less efficient the car the more likely the voter is Republican – or said otherwise NASCAR votes Republican.

Mr. Phillips gives us a history of religious evangelism in the U.S. – and one is presented with the constant struggle for secularization of government. The U.S. would appear to be split between the secular Northeast and Western States and the evangelical South and Mid-West. The strife between these two groups has been going on since the Civil War.

Mr. Phillips suggests that this over-reliance on the fundamentalist vote may yet cause a rupture within the Republican Party – as the results of the 2008 election demonstrate by the geographical breakdown of votes.

This book is sobering reading – in some ways his doomsday prophecy is occurring with an economic recession and oil prices that cannot be controlled. Mr. Phillips does not offer a solution. Hopefully the current Obama administration can do something to resolve the religious malaise.

There are a few question marks. The U.S. today has one of the highest immigration rates of any country in the world – making for a constant renewal of the melting pot. Also American post-collegial schools (Harvard et al) are still among the best in the world. I don’t know if manufacturing is as important today as 100 years ago. There is a vast entertainment industry in the U.S. This includes not only movies but books, magazines all being wrapped around the internet. This was all inconceivable 50 years ago. Also Britain declined not only due to lack of innovation (I dispute the arguments of Mr. Phillips on religion in Britain) – but from German aggression in two World Wars.


One of my favourite quotes in the preface from Bill Morgan: “one of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal”

[Kevin Beary · Rating 4 out of 5]

its incredible how accurately this book predicted the current economic realities we are currently experiencing , It was written over 3 years ago.
This book makes credible arguments that oil and religion have been the focus of our politics at the cost to the american people. I mean , we went into Iraq for Oil and we didn`t even get it ...the chinese won the first contract.
The direction and political decisions influenced by religion is staggering and scary.
A worthwhile and eye-opening read. This book will not make you happy. It points out the ugly truths and trends in America which could lead to its demise.
And the downside of the book is that there were no solutions ventured forth .
I for one believe that with the new President and congress some of the issues this book sheds light on , Obama already repealed some of the religious fueled policies of Bush and we have our first study FDA approved trial of stem cells therapy.
I believe that Obama`s focus , unlike the oilmen Bush and Cheney , is truly to ween us off of Oil and I believe the economy meltdown has put market forces back to work in the right way for that to happen.
As far as the economy and debt , The economic recession has also radically changed the corporate financial landscape , Obama will push through more regulatory oversight to prevent such recurrence and we as Americans have no choice but to become savers not spenders and one can see this happening now as more and more retail stores shut down , and businesses cut back. We may raise our National debt in the short term but I feel that the painful corrections at home and in business are well under way.
There is hope.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A somber, thoroughly researched and tightly reasoned, and sometimes angry indictment of the current administration's policies, and to lesser extents of the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, the fundamentalist religious subculture, and the financial and energy industries in America.
The author is a former Republican strategist who believes that the party he believed in has been hijacked, corrupted, and shamed.
He makes very strong cases that America is the locomotive pulling the rest of the world into a combination economic, natural resource, and military train wreck that will be worse than the Great Depression and the two World Wars rolled into one. It brings to mind that supposed old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times" - the next few decades look likely to be entirely too interesting, especially for the U.S. Buckle in, this ride is going to be rough. And it is vital that as soon as possible, which means with whoever wins the 2008 election, that the government and citizenry go into overdrive working to reverse the trends of overconsumption of energy, reckless borrowing and living beyond our means, and most of all the drift toward anti-democratic, anti-scientific, anti-rational religious fanaticism that if it continues will make the other changes impossible.

[George · Rating 2 out of 5]

GIVING UP.

“…one of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.”—Journalist, Bill Moyers, in a late-2004 speech. (Kindle location 196)

Thick with statistics and citations, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, by Keven Phillips is a bit of a slog to read. While I’m convinced there is much of value to be mined within these pages; my mind grows weary of the pick-and-shovel effort.

With six chapters, 218 pages, and 38% completed, and with my three-week public library loan coming to the end—I’m throwing in the towel. Perhaps I’ll pick it up again one day, probably not.

Recommendation: If your more inclined towards academic texts than I, by all means give it a go.

“Historically, great powers have too often gone out in blazes of religious invocation.” (p. 103).

Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 463 pages

[sologdin · Rating 2 out of 5]

not as strong as Wealth and Democracy A Political History of the American Rich, which is one of the great non-fiction texts out there. it's more three separate essays at best tangentially related to each other, as with schlosser's Reefer Madness Sex Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market. it does nevertheless continue his examination of public debt from other texts, which is significant.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Done with the book, yet still digesting... Despite my anti-religious bent, I am not quite ready to take all of the authors views on religion at face-value... Does Tim LeHay really represent such a strong force in the emerging evangelical movement? Is the proportion of literalists really as dangerously high as Phillips suggests? I sure hope not. Regardless, this book was a facinating read and well worth the time. I must agree that the rapid fire statistics sometimes tried my attention, but the overall picture was very enlightening. At the very least, I am now much clearer on why we went to war. Obviously not bad intelligence, just oil. I can almost respect the reasoning behind the Bush-Cheeey "pre-emptive strike" now, even if the morality is pretty staggeringly corrupt. Now that we are there, maybe the Republicans could garner a little bit of additional support for the war if they would just come clean about the motives. HA HA! Just kidding. The public would pile their pitchforks and torches in the back of their air conditioned SUVs to drive the polititians out of town...

[Mark Valentine · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I liked about this book is Phillips' balance and conscientious reporting. After all, he is taking on a giant in American politics the conservative Christian right. I also like that he has the courage to report straight and without shades of favoritism. I was disconcerted to read of just how badly the yoke between conservative Christians, the oil corporations, and the political arm really is and I can see that it smacks of hypocrisy. Since the Bible mentions that one should not "be unequally yoked," to align Christianity with self-serviing big business and aggrandizing politicians can mean only one thing to me: American-style fundamentalist Christianity has sold its soul for influence and forgotten the Message.

I admire Phillips immensely and will continue to read his books.

[Mark Valentine · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I liked about this book is Phillips' balance and conscientious reporting. After all, he is taking on a giant in American politics the conservative Christian right. I also like that he has the courage to report straight and without shades of favoritism. I was disconcerted to read of just how badly the yoke between conservative Christians, the oil corporations, and the political arm really is and I can see that it smacks of hypocrisy. Since the Bible mentions that one should not "be unequally yoked," to align Christianity with self-serving big business and aggrandizing politicians can mean only one thing to me: American-style fundamentalist Christianity has sold its soul for influence and forgotten the Message.

I admire Phillips immensely and will continue to read his books.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book suggests that the US will shortly lose its dominant world position and that fault for this can be laid at the feet of three culprits: the religious right, creditors, and Big Oil. This is a well researched political treatise that no doubt touches on many truths, but is essentially a journalist’s political perspective, lacking rigorous objective scrutiny. Much of the evidence is antidotal, and although I acknowledge its plentiful and often compelling, other conclusions and evidence could produce wholly different and even contradictory conclusions. Still, it’s a perspective worth telling and the accusations are worthy of response from the accused.

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Phillips' articulates the concerns of many Americans that are troubled by the current blending of American religion and democracy. He moves on to assess the dangers oil diplomacy and excessive national and household debt. This book was written before the current home mortgage crises, but it clearly predicts that the real estate boom spurred by the Federal Reserve cannot continue. That now appears to be an easy prediction to make. So why weren't the bankers smart enough to anticipate it?

[Erik · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was given to me by my father. It's filled with brilliant insights into the looming pressence of religion and oil in our government's practices and backed up by endless research and examples throughout history. Bored me to tears, took me 2 months to read, and made me never want to read political non-fiction ever again. I rewarded myself after finishing it by reading "The Flanders Panel" by Arturo Perez-Reverte which was ever so satisfying.

[Mike Pouraryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I am reading this, I wonder when will we truly think about "going beyond oil"....I finally finished it. I found it, in many ways, to be an overwhelming book because of the profound historical context. I also found it troubling how he foresaw many of the challenges we're facing now--and how there seems to be no consesus on how to deal with the "day after".

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

All about world finance, the frightening effect of the religious right on American politics, and the end of easy oil. Brilliant. Erudite. Sobering. Should be widely read.

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too scary.

[Sharon Beers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kevin Phillips was remarkably prescient in this book. His subtitle is perfectly descriptive.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not his best book, perhaps. Something of an uneven collection of parts

[Zeke Chase · Rating 2 out of 5]

In late March of 2013, Pat Robertson, televangelist founder of “The 700 Club”, self-described seer, multi-millionaire, former presidential candidate and known huckster said, “Ladies and gentlemen, beware of these scamsters, especially scamsters in religious garb, quoting the Bible – I mean, run from them. They're all over the place.” A surprising bit of honesty from the man.

Pat Robertson is a Dominionist. The denomination takes its name from Genesis, wherein God said “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” This is taken to mean that Christians – conveniently, “true” Christians – are meant to have dominion over the whole of the Earth. Since the United States is the birthplace and hegemon of Dominionism, it takes the form of plans for global theocracy, with the US as the seat of governance, and demands Biblical literalism and Old Testament law, including (but not limited to) the death penalty for homosexuals, unchaste women, drug users, prostitutes, sexual deviants and possibly recalcitrant youth. Dominionism has been compared to fascism, neofascism, Christofascism and Christian Taliban.

Kevin Phillips, a former Republican Party strategist who worked for the Nixon administration, delves into Dominionism as one of three spokes on the wheel that will roll the US over the cliff. In this book, “American Theocracy”, he paints a very detailed picture on how, collectively, peak oil, Dominionism and unrestrained debt will be the downfall of the American Empire, and will force a yield to an Asian world power, most likely China.

Of course, when I say “detailed”, I mean detailed. He goes on and on and on, blathering ad infinitum, until you zone out for a minute or two, and then he's droning “As I've shown”, or “As we've seen”, and you say to yourself, “Hmm, I guess he made a genuine point. Oh, well, I ain't going back to verify.”

That was pretty much the problem with this book in a nutshell. I was initially drawn to it because it's written by a former Republican who's become disillusioned and is speaking out (and he takes his opportunities to throw suckerpunches at liberals and the Democrats, too – much of the criticism deserved), so you know he's not some Markos Moulitsas scouring RightWingWatch.org looking for the worst comments taken out of context to preach to the already liberal choir. Phillips is addressing the American people as a whole, trying to make a cumulative case. But he pretty much just says “We're fucked” and leaves it at that. In a book like his, I'd expect the last chapter to be about preparing us for the Chinese takeover.

Let's go through this step by step:

The book is divided into three parts:
1) Peak Oil
2) Dominionism
3) Debt

In Part 1, he makes a somewhat bold declarative statement that history will have no doubt that Iraq was about oil – it was just short of an overt resource war, and history will reflect that. For a non-Paulbot Republican, that is a bold admission. Then he goes through the complete history of oil, the whale oil used in Rembrandt's paintings, the first US well drilled in Ohio, George Washington buying 200 acres on oil slick land, etcetera, and discusses how previous world hegemons were displaced in their power when their resource either ran out or was replaced by something better – Dutch reliance on wind was outperformed by British coal, the Brits by US oil. He goes through the long and detailed history of how Iraq's oil production has been hampered for decades due to sanctions, and how it's the last bastion of oil left. Saudi Arabia may have already peaked (the Saudis would keep that a secret for as long as they could, when it happens), and the US needs a replacement. I'll admit this was somewhat interesting, getting into all the lurid details.

Part 2 goes through a long history of why fringe religious denominations have always maintained vitality in America where most of the rest of Christendom as matured to a “secular, almost agnostic Christianity”. Then he gets into the the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), and how it's maintained a stranglehold on the former Confederacy states and has become the closest thing to an official US religion. He briefly – very briefly – touches on Dominionism (he uses the more specific, technical term Christian Reconstructionism) and mentions things like the “Left Behind” books and many organizations Tim LaHaye has his fingers in. He mentions Falwell and Robertson and their comment about 9/11 being God's punishment for sodomy or masturbation or something like that. He does not mention RJ Rushdoony, the founder of Christian Reconstructionism. He very thinly skims over Biblical prophesies regarding Israel and the Temple Mount, but you'd have to know these things in advance to know what he means. He does not use the F-word – fascism. He does not make dire nuclear apocalyptic or jihad-laden predictions about road Dominionism could lead us down. He does briefly mention the “disenlightenment” the US is going through, largely because of conservative Christianity – and one needs remember this was written in 2006, preceding Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann.

This was my overall problem with this book – it does nothing but spell out the problem in the most clinical of terms, and I already knew all that.

I've mentioned twice now that Dominionism can be and has been associated with fascism. This is actually the second book I've read on the subject, the first being “American Fascists” by Chris Hedges, which directly paints Dominionism as a fascist movement. Hedges himself didn't write a flawless book on the subject, but he at least draws a line in the sand, calls a spade a spade, invokes Godwin's Law (for however flawed that law is) and calls it fascism. He paints the picture that this can be the spark of world war or crusade, the likes of which could turn apocalyptic. Phillips, on the other hand, takes a different tactic: the US is just the latest in a long line of empires or hegemons, and their fall is nigh. Although the preface leans heavily on Dominionism, and the title itself uses the word theocracy, it becomes apparent that this is merely a marketing gimmick, and religiosity is only one small part of America's downfall.

And this brings me to Part 3 – the debt, and the credit bubble of 2008. Already knowing the tone of the first two parts of the book, I found myself unable to go through all those pages dealing with financial jargon and GDP vs. debt figures, especially describing an event that in my time, has already happened and we know the result of. Because this is 2013, I grant Phillips blanket credibility on his predictions on debt, because they came to fruition just two years after this book's publication. I didn't need to read the minutiae of it, especially when he's already alluded to what extensive debt means by way of historical precedent. I had to skip ahead to the last chapter and the afterword.

I learned almost nothing new – certainly nothing new of note – from this book. It does paint a vivid picture given all these small facts that I already know – namely, the ascent of China in the wake of US hegemonic descent. The book did leave me with a bit of a new fear of the Chinese (let's hope they accept the Western values of democracy and inalienable human rights before they take the thrown, and the US follows the UK's descent trajectory rather than Rome's), but I didn't read this book to be afraid of the Chinese. I read this book to be afraid of the Dominionists, which it failed at.

I applaud Phillips' effort, but he's fallen short of the goalposts.

[Kit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Upon finishing closing these covers with finality, I was perplexed about how to rate this read. I didn't dislike it, but neither did I love it. It was a challenging read, more a slog really and that was all the worse because each subject herein covered by Kevin Phillips are subjects I am currently in earnest to thoroughly explore - i.e., American religion, American capitalism, and America's blind addiction to cheap oil. Each subject, in turn, was addressed and waded into, but none of which were given the brutal examination this reader was eager to drink in. At book's end, I was titillated but still wanted more.
Phillip divides this volume into three parts covering America's blundered oil grabs, her unrepentant evangelical Christianity grasping the reins of state, and tragically replacing manufacturing with finance. He shines as a historian when repeatedly comparing 21st America to 17th century Spain, the 18th century Dutch Republic, 19th and 20th century Britain as each predecessor believed themselves anointed by divinity to be a singular vehicle for restoring a dominating morality upon an errant globe. Each empire exploited a resource (stolen riches from a newly conquered continent, wind and sail and the world's fisheries, and seemingly endless veins of coal). Each empire eventually grew indolent, replacing intellectual pursuits and discourse with inflexible religion. Each empire closed its factories and opened banks instead. Each of those empires sank from envious heights to ignoble mediocrity. Each of these empires never realized their self-ordained crowning as diety's favorite adherents. America is devoutly marching down this well-worn path seemingly oblivious to the yawning cliff ahead.
Phillips' style evokes an erudite writer who is endlessly fond of clever word combinations. At first, I found his style quite quaint especially when some phrases found me baffled and necessitated another deliberate reading. His vocabulary is rich and deep, his sentences replete with nuances steep. Reader, keep that dictionary close and be mindful of sudden metaphors. Phillip aims to educate, each statement is studiously reinforced with supporting material that's copiously endnoted in over thirty pages. An inveterate number cruncher, he's overly fond of quoting statistics that after a couple of sentences invariably blur and start to become sort of mind-numbing as the intended significance inevitably becomes lost. His pacing is oft pedantic, sometimes ambulatory, but redemptively his thinking always returns to the subject at hand at chapter's and book's end.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a deep dive of three major issues the author sees as threatening America (written in the early 2000's and still relevant today): 1) Oil dependence and the not adapting to new fuel sources--think Britain and coal; 2) Evangelical/fundamental religions that insist on substituting faith for reason in all areas including government and science -- ignoring logic and facts doesn't keep a country great; and 3) financial sector that thrives on debt -- a country can't be great as a borrower nation and not a producing nation. The author makes no bones about disliking the Bushes. (I'm going to have to follow up and see what he thinks now.) The approach I understand best is the historical one. Previous countries have firmly believed they had God on their side, but when they did not adapt to new markets and energy sources, they clung to the idea of their prominence, and God abandoned them when reason flew out the door. Profiles are the Spanish (hey, they got a lot of gold from the new world, but ultimately that didn't help), the Dutch, and the British. I learned a lot reading this book. Although I can't say that endorse all of it, I think I'm supportive of most if it. The documentation is sound. The author seems to be drawing attention to the US's flaws without addressing that other emerging countries have their own internal challenges too. It's fair though that the book is about America and not...let's say China. I rated this book at 4 stars because it's a detailed difficult read (which may be a tad unfair because that's what I was going for when I picked this book up).

[Ray Dunsmore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Possibly the most important book of political theory to come out of the W. Bush administration. If anyone ever tells you "no one saw it coming" about any of the quagmires the USA finds itself in, point them right here, where Kevin Phillips accurately predicts both the coming 2008 financial crisis/recession and the rise of right-wing Christian fundamentalism that metastasized and mutated into today's Trumpist/Q-Anon movement. Plus, he lays out a pretty watertight argument to prove that the Iraq War (and the Gulf War before it) was primarily an attempt to salvage the US' waning influence as a world leader in petroleum (which we completely fumbled and fucked up). Essential reading for anyone who looks around at this declining empire and asks themselves "Jesus, how did we get here?" This is how.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I chose to read Kevin Phillips’ “American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century” at the worst possible time. We were in the middle of buying a new house, selling the old one, packing, moving, unpacking, and doing our best to settle in and establish our old routines in a completely different setting. I’d checked the book out of our old town’s library, returned it two-thirds finished the day the movers showed up, then reserved it from our new town’s library the next day.

Given all that, seven weeks seems a pretty reasonable length of time to finish the book, but that’s only part of the reason it took so long. The other (and this one I can’t be blamed for) is that “American Theocracy” is a grind of a read. Kevin Phillips is clearly intelligent, and his sincerity in exploring, as he sees it, the unfortunate drift of his Republican party towards a fundamentalist Christian worldview while rejecting science, rationalism, and, what was once their stock-in-trade, fiscal responsibility, is obvious.

Three problems handcuff this book, though the first isn’t Phillips’ fault. The first is that the book was published in 2006 (at the nadir of George W. Bush’s presidency, who is almost certainly the most evangelical leader this country has ever had) and many of the book's hypotheses about what dire turns of events we might expect to see in the 2010s have not come to pass. (It is entirely my fault that I continue to read outdated current-events nonfiction.) The second is that Phillips simply isn’t a very good writer. His style is stiff and academic, and if this is how his other books are written, I suspect his audience — though it could, and should, be much larger — is made up of scholars and think-tank wonks who write similarly dry material. Finally, despite an abundance of data, each piece of which feels compelling and damning in its own right, Phillips largely leaves it to the reader to tie the separate strands of his book together.

Yes, radical religion (Christian or otherwise) is dangerous to democracy. Yes, our dependence on oil, and lack of serious progress at scale on viable alternatives, is worrisome. And, yes, large-scale public and private debt, if continued unabated, is potentially catastrophic. These don’t seem like novel ideas, even back in 2006. Nor does the idea that policy driven by people with a biblical worldview, especially those who believe in the rapture and see signs of its imminence in global events, would result in their further deterioration. But correlation does not necessarily mean causation, and, if it does in this case, spending 394 pages to come to the conclusion that radical religion is bad for America, and the world, seems like overkill.

Despite the title, Phillips isn’t really suggesting that America is becoming a theocracy but that his political party of choice is. A better, less misleading title would have been “Republican Theocracy,” but that, no doubt, would have reduced the book’s already narrow audience further still. In the end, for this liberal who is always looking for intelligent perspectives that don’t simply echo my worldview, the bigger disappointment is that Phillips isn’t a better writer. I appreciate the thought-provoking material he provides, but can’t abide the castor-oil delivery.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scholarly overview of the influence of conservative religion, the oil industry and national debt on domestic and foreign policy in the U.S. leading up to 2006. While the book is now somewhat dated, it serves as a useful foundation for understanding the politics and administration of George W. Bush and his not-so-immediate successor, Donald Trump. The chapters on Southern white conservative evangelical/fundamentalist sects and their spread to the north and west are especially useful to readers surprised or perplexed by the support of religious conservatives for a candidate like Donald Trump, who on the surface seems to contradict some of the values of conservative fundamentalists.