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 - Plausible enoughThis is an important look at three staples of current Republican policy that Phillips finds threatening to the US's well-being: its dependence on foreign oil, the Religious Right, and soaring US debt. Phillips' main thesis, though hard to find, seems persuasive enough: ill-founded fundamentalist politics enables two key hazardous trends: 1) oil-driven foreign policy and 2) irresponsible financial policy, resulting in unprecedented private & national debt. Phillips' strengths are his focus on realpolitik consequences of policy & his preponderance of disturbing facts, although to keep up, you will need some familiarity with history or other social sciences. His weaknesses are his repetition & length, questionable read of history, and lack of integration between the three main subjects, although each section is informative in its own right. Also, a handful of his points seem to rest on loose analogies, circumstantial evidence, or evidence without footnotes, making evaluation difficult, but overall, his analyses are plausible enough to warrant closer attention. Rating: - Articulate, much research, and 2/3 badly misleadingThen the remaining one-third is shot through with doubtful connections. The author commendably states clearly his three big topics right off the bat: 1. Oil is "done"; 2. Religion in America is poisoning us; 3. The US is drowning in debt. Topics #1 and #3 as stated in "American Theocracy" have been shown to be largely untrue by many, many sources, and #2 seems to conclude that Americans are bad because we let religion (fundamental kinds, anyway) drive us to all sorts of homicidal and larcenous behaviors. Southern Americans, anyway. Actually southern white Americans of English/Dutch/ sometimes Celtic/sometimes German/sometimes other ethnic origins. These awful prejudices unfortunately weave through the whole book. The book in one sense is well-written, though. The line of arguments are clearly stated, and the facts and stories Kevin Phillips chooses to write about can sometimes be interesting and informative. As many reviewers noted, there are pounds of research cited and statistics listed. The problem is that he is extremely selective about which he presents. In the "oil" segment, for example, you will find almost no mention of experts who estimate the relatively long period of oil reserves worldwide (one actually makes a cameo appearance, and the reader is hereby challenged to find it!). Nor does he cite the fact that estimated reserves have always, always edged upwards. In the "religion" segment he makes a quite-wrong statement about Newt Gingrich's historical fiction series on the Civil War, meaning he could not have actually read the books. With this kind of selective reporting, one cannot sift the truth of his arguments. Then there is the ending: there isn't one. No summary, no conclusions, no points for action. After all that. For the sake of backing up the title of this review, the badly-misleading part of the "debt" section in this book concerns the author's own - perhaps unwitting - argument against himself. He actually stated that the amount of total personal savings was greater than the total personal debt. Gracious, mendacious! If the statistics sound overwhelming in this section of the book, the reader is invited to skim over them, because they are hard to trust anyway. In spite of these rather harsh judgments (and overly long review!), "American Theocracy" really is interesting. The prudent reader will discount the alternating condescension and panic, and just enjoy the discussion. If you are inclined to think as the author does, you will certainly like the debating points you could use. If you are inclined to dismiss the author's point of views, then don't - just read it. If you are wary of what a leftist-in-charge might do, then note the line of argument and hone your own. Rating:  - Tough, Chilling AnalysisAuthor Kevin Phillips examines U.S. political and economic trends in this searing look at religion, energy, and government spending. Readers see that U.S. foreign policy is strongly, perhaps dangerously influenced by conservative Christians. We also see how the USA is spending itself into danger, and is doing far too little to end its risky dependence on foreign oil. Phillips offers several parallels between between the USA and Britain; for example comparing the questionable U.S. invasion of Iraq to British colonialism in the middle east after World War I. Readers also see how losing control of an energy source can cost a nation dearly - as Britain's power declined in the 20th Century when oil began replacing coal. Phillips writes with an alarmist tone, one that readers (and non-readers) should listen to. Phillips proved his eye for future trends with EMERGING REPUBLICAN MAJORITY, his 1969 book correctly forecasting GOP dominance of the South and White House via rising conservatism and racial backlash. Phillips recently left the GOP in disgust at its right-wing Christian politics. Some find this book a bit stiff and alarmist, but it's an important, thought-provoking effort. Rating: - Hubbert's peek into the present.In the Republican years before Nixon resigned, I perused the editorials each Sunday in our Joplin Globe. Among the syndicated columnists, Jack Anderson & John Roche passed for liberal; Kevin Phillips & Max Rafferty (former superintendent of California Public Schools) were the conservatives. Between the latter, Phillips seemed the more reasoned. Of late, Phillips, who worked like the dickens to get Nixon elected & who like so many of the old Goldwater guard deserted the Republican orthodoxy, has got a good deal of mileage out of shredding the bedding of the Family Bush. In "American Theocracy," Phillips summons up fearsome documentation for his thesis that the US of A is headed down a path previously trod by Spain, the Netherlands, & Great Britain: their governments paralyzed by indebtedness & mesmerized by evangelical zeal failed to replace their fading sources of energy & so collapsed under the weight their own inertia. Because Phillips is not out to preach to the choir, he doesn't dawdle over pop topics like "renewable" energy sources or the isolationist-directed reducing dependence on foreign oil: it's too late for all that. Instead, he cites the instances of how we allowed our blind love of the "freedom of the road" to lead us to the brink of energy catastrophe: the 1956 "Hubbert peak," the prediction by Shell Oil geologist Marion Hubbert that oil extraction in CONUS would peak betw. 1965 & 1970; the rise of nationalized petroleum industries in Iraq, Libya, & Iran (& of late, Venezuela); & the especially scary notion that petroleum geology is an unpopular major among American college graduates, whereas it's an extremely desirable one in Africa, Latin America, etc. His Goldwater-like disdain for the current influence of the evangelical Christian ideologists is painfully evident, but Phillips points out that war & politics in the U.S. have traditionally "borne a heavy imprint of church leadership & denominationalism." Like the despised liberals of 40+ years ago, the evangelically correct right wing of today has "taken the lead in promoting unworkable social-planning [the "panacea of abstinence" in sexual matters] abstractions." Moreover, the US of A is not the first instance of a govt. in the throes of apocalyptic fibrillation: Phillips reminds us that 17th-cent. Netherlands & WWI-era Great Britain firmly believed that Biblical prophecy would stand them in good stead, even while their empires crumbled. Each time, they were sadly disappointed that God did not come to their rescue. With regard to the "borrower-industrial" complex--the "financialization" of the union--, Phillips dabbles in some prophecy of his own when he writes, albeit pleonastically, that the "maintenance of the upward revaluation of homes may be the next frontier of risk socialization." We have reached that frontier today. That a former republican strategist--a guy that wrote 40 years ago of the formerly Democratic South becoming a bastion of Republican values--has so little respect for the Republican Party of today is cause for some serious consideration; however, Democrats have done little but concede to Republican whims at every turn. False optimism about an endless supply of crude oil, gross mismanagement of our holy war in Iraq, & the withering of our manufacturing base should give one pause about how much longer the US of A can hang the "superpower" shingle on its swinging doors. Rating: - Unconvincing account by a disillusioned RepublicanPhillips doesn't personalize the book in this way, but this is clearly the story of how this life-long Republican activist and presidential advisor fell out of love with his party. As such, it's interesting and it parallels the political journeys of a number of people in my family. He believes the GOP is guilty of two bad sets of policies, those encouraging both public and private debt in the United States, and those policies supporting over-reliance on oil. What is really driving Phillips away from his party, however, isn't a question of bad policy choices. He's frustrated and disgusted by the party's growing reliance on fundamentalist Christians who are intolerant of others, hostile to education and science, and, frankly, downmarket kinds of people. Some of Phillips' reaction to the fundamentalists is well-reasoned and grounded in legitimate concerns about where this 40 percent of the electorate would like to take the country. A large part of Phillips' frustration is more emotional - - he belongs in the mixed group of secular and mainline Protestants who used to dominate the GOP, and he thinks that lower-class, rural fundamentalists are icky. As this suggests, there's a mixture of reason and emotionalism that pervades this book on the question of religion. Nonetheless, I found the chapters on religion the most interesting because Phillips works hard to trace the spread of Southern denominations outward into parts of the border states, upper Midwest, and intermountain West. In contrast, his discussions of oil and debt are frustrating. He doesn't know enough economics to make the analysis of debt convincing, so we're left with a kind of schoolmarmish disapproval of people who borrow too much. On the question of oil he tends toward the kind of conspiracy theories that one expects from the Michael Moore Left instead of from a disillusioned Republican. Most importantly, Phillips never makes a convincing case that these three concerns are linked. Why do fundamentalist Christians like oil? On the face of it, it's an odd association and there's certainly no biblical foundation for it. There's even less reason for "Christians" to be associated with debt, given biblical prohibitions on usury. So Phillips leaves lots of unanswered questions in this review of the last fifty years of the Republican party. In association with Amazon.com | |