Conservatives' new books have Bush in crosshairs

[TomInTib]

Conservatives who charge President George W. Bush has imposed a theocracy, risked US bankruptcy and fanned flames of anti-Americanism are flooding US booksellers with their irate tomes.

Leading the list of bestsellers on Amazon.com is commentator Kevin Phillips' "American Theocracy, the Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st century."

"The rapture, end-times, and Armageddon hucksters in the US rank with any Shiite ayatollahs, and the last two presidential elections mark the transformation of the GOP into the first religious party in US history," argues Phillips, who cites messianic overtones in some of Bush's pronouncements, the mobilization of churches ahead of elections and of creationist fervor.

According to Phillips, this trend is bad news for the United States.

more:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/afpentertainmentusbushbooks&printer=1;_ylt=AiYJ0BjZn89ZjsZbqzQY.vmtOrgF;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Yeah, but hey, we are the only religious cult that is guaranteed

going to heaven.... pulleeeeeeze.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. He's on BookTV tonight...

9pm

It's a replay from yesterday, well worth watching him take Grover down a couple of pegs. :)

This week on After Words, Kevin Phillips, a former Republican strategist explains his problems with America's majority political party. His new book is titled "American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century." He is interviewed by GOP strategist, Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform.


CSPAN2

[AlCzervik]

4. norquist was really trying to pick Phillips brains for pointers.

i'm picking that book us this week and will be reading it all the way to London.

[tocqueville]

3. read the Fukuyama article here

http://www.kurdmedia.com/articles.asp?id=11461

[Yoda Yada]

5. Here are some of the main points from the book....

(These are direct quotes from the book which appeared in a book review in our local paper.) In Phillips' previous books, he discusses the Bush family's "blatant business cronyism," with ties to big oil, big corporations and the military-industrial complex.

Phllips comes up with five symptoms of " a power already at its peak and STARTING a 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 down-playing of science".

4) "considerable popular anticipation of a millennial time frame".

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 this is a sixth symptom, almost too obvious, high debt, which can become "crippling in its own right".

In an afterward, he suggests that the GOP coalition is "fatally flawed from a national-interest standpoint" partly because it is dominated "by an array of OUTSIDER RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS caught up in biblical morality, distrust of science and a global imperative of political and religious evangelicalism."

[Dr.Phool]

6. I just picked it up this afternoon

I'm about 50 pages in now, and it looks like it's going to be good.