"American Theocracy" by Kevin Phillips -- NYT book review

[Bozita]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/books/17book.html

March 17, 2006
Books of The Times | 'American Theocracy'

Tying Religion and Politics to an Impending U.S. Decline
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

Kevin Phillips, a former Republican strategist who helped design that party's Southern strategy, made his name with his 1969 book, "The Emerging Republican Majority," which predicted the coming ascendancy of the G.O.P. In the decades since, Mr. Phillips has become a populist social critic, and his last two major books — "Wealth and Democracy" (2002) and "American Dynasty" (2004) — were furious jeremiads against the financial excesses of the 1990's and what he portrayed as the Bush family's "blatant business cronyism," with ties to big oil, big corporations and the military-industrial complex.

His latest book, "American Theocracy," the concluding volume of this "trilogy of indictments," ranges far beyond the subject suggested by its title — an examination of the religious right and its influence on the current administration — to anatomize a host of economic, political, military and social developments that Mr. Phillips sees as troubling indices of the United States' coming decline. The book not only reiterates observations made in "Wealth and Democracy" and "American Dynasty," but also reworks some of the arguments made by the historian Paul Kennedy in "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers," dealing with the role that economic factors play in the fortunes of great powers and the dangers empires face in becoming financially and militarily overextended.

All in all, "American Theocracy" is a more reasoned (and therefore more sobering) book than "American Dynasty," substituting copious illustrations and detailed if sometimes partisan analysis for angry, conspiratorial rants. But if Mr. Phillips does an artful job of pulling together a lot of electoral data and historical insights to buttress his polemical points, he also demonstrates a tendency to extrapolate — sometimes profligately — from the specific to the general, from the particular to the collective, especially when making his prognostications of impending decline.

As he's done in so many of his earlier books, Mr. Phillips draws a lot of detailed analogies in these pages, using demographics, economic statistics and broader cultural trends to map macropatterns throughout history. In analyzing the fates of Rome, Hapsburg Spain, the Dutch Republic, Britain and the United States, he comes up with five symptoms of "a power already at its peak and starting to decline": 1) "widespread public concern over cultural and economic decay," along with social polarization and a widening gap between rich and poor; 2) "growing religious fervor" manifested in a close state-church relationship and escalating missionary zeal; 3) "a rising commitment to faith as opposed to reason and a corollary downplaying of science"; 4) "considerable popular anticipation of a millennial time frame" and 5) "hubris-driven national strategic and military overreach" in pursuit of "abstract international missions that the nation can no longer afford, economically or politically." Added to these symptoms, he writes, is a sixth one, almost too obvious to state: high debt, which can become "crippling in its own right."

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[slor]

1. Putting it on the reading list n/t

[ucmike]

2. i've had an advanced copy for awhile

the introduction and first chapter detailing the influence and history of the oil industry were enough to make me put it down. i got angry and depressed at the info. i am still pecking away at it in little bites, i get frustrated realizing how dead-on his analysis is.

[ChristianLibrul]

3. Theofascism

Say to theofascists whom you're forced to deal with, "Jerry Falwell approves of rape at the Air Force Academy. He must, or he'd speak out against it."

Don't forget Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, the American Family Association, Southern Baptists. Do this whenever a crime or abomination hits the news.

[RedEarth]

4. Thanks for the post...... good read .... kr

[teryang]

5. Nice hatchet job on the best critic of American aristocracy and its

...betrayal of the nation. Kevin Phillips is a national treasure.

Phillips isn't about polemics, he's about facts. He lifts the curtain the corporate behemouths have pulled over America's eyes.

Don't even read Phillips text in Wealth and Democracy, just look at the graphs and charts and their sources. The book is so well documented it scares the bejesus out of the gilded, coddled theives running this nation.

He isn't prognosticating decline, we are already in a decline over thirty years in duration, according to Phillips. This mistake, repeated in the review, leads me to believe this the hack author of the review, really didn't spend much time reading the books.

Phillips' point is that the bush dynasty wedded to cronyism, war, and war profiteering is accelerating the decline.

If you read his books and listen to him speak you realize that Phillips is a careful scholar and not given to polemics or invective. He doesn't limit his analysis to the Bush cabal in Wealth and Democracy nor does engage in conjecture about conspiracies. He tends to avoid generalizations that cannot be supported by facts. What he does do is cite historical data and trends in support of his generalizations, knowing their limitations, and is not given to overstatement. This review is unjustified and unsubstantiated and treats Phillips in depth analysis were somehow specious or illogical.

Wealth and Democracy is a milestone in American political (and economic) analysis which will be studied hundreds of years from now to understand what happened to the great American republic.

This disinformation pandering reveiwer won't even merit a footnote.

[Doctor_J]

6. The Catholic "voting guides" were handed out after church today

looks like "pro-life" means, in reality, "pro-war, pro-death penalty, anti-choice". Selective morality - completely partisan.

[Bozita]

7. "American Theocracy" is now available