Overview from Publisher:
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.
Articles, Reviews, and Interviews:
"Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history."
"We have had small-scale theocracies in North America before -- in Puritan New England and later in Mormon Utah. Today, a leading power such as the United States approaches theocracy when it meets the conditions currently on display: an elected leader who believes himself to speak for the Almighty, a ruling political party that represents religious true believers, the certainty of many Republican voters that government should be guided by religion and, on top of it all, a White House that adopts agendas seemingly animated by biblical worldviews."
"Indeed, there is a potent change taking place in this country's domestic and foreign policy, driven by religion's new political prowess and its role in projecting military power in the Mideast."
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"Former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips joins us to discuss his new book, "American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century." Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Phillips was viewed as one of the GOP's top theoreticians and electoral analysts."
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"American Theocracy may be the most alarming analysis of where we are and where we may be going to have appeared in many years. It is not without polemic, but unlike many of the more glib and strident political commentaries of recent years, it is extensively researched and frighteningly persuasive...By describing a series of major transformations, by demonstrating the relationships among them, and by discussing them with passionate restraint, Phillips has created a harrowing picture of danger that no American reader will welcome, but that none should ignore."
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Chicago Sun-Times (March 12, 2006)
"American Theocracy serves as an invaluable resource, given its marshaling of facts and figures, as well as the breadth and depth of its historical analyses... Overall, Phillips’ book is a thoughtful and somber jeremiad, written throughout with a graceful wryness...a capstone to his life’s work."
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Baltimore Sun (March 12, 2006)
"Phillips makes a very interesting argument that the old North-South split in this country is far deeper and more ingrained than most people realize, and that one way of looking at American politics today is to say that the South managed the aftermath of its defeat in 1865 that it is now the dominant section of the country."
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