UFPPC (www.ufppc.org) Book Discussion Series @ Mandolin Café (Tacoma, WA) April 3-17, 2006, 7:00 p.m.

Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (New York: Viking, 2006).

Preface. For Phillips, the term theocracy “sums up a potent change in this country’s domestic and foreign policy making—religion’s new political prowess and its role in the projection of military power in the Middle Eastern Bible lands” (viii). The United States “goes about as far in a theocratic direction as it can when it satisfies the unfortunate criteria on display in Washington circa 2005: an elected leader who believes himself in some way to speak for God, a ruling political party that represents religious true believers and seeks to mobilize the churches, the conviction of many voters in that Republican party that government should be guided by religion, and . . . White House implementation of domestic and international political agendas that seem to be driven by religious motivations and biblical worldviews” (viii-ix). Oil, the religious right, and the financial sector as pillars of “the Republican presidential coalition” (ix). The Bush family as a promoter of these politics (Phillips’s American Dynasty, 2004), which looks increasingly like “a rogue coalition” (x). Complicity of national Democrats (x). Present coalition the “triple mutation” of the Sun Belt dominance of oil, military, aerospace, and retirement country that Phillips predicted in the late 1960s in The Emerging Republican Majority (1969) (x-xi). One of Phillips’s inspirations then was Sir Halford Mackinder’s Eurasian “heartland” theory; cf. “today’s ‘red states’” (xi-xii). Debt vulnerabilities and end-times mentality of the religious right produce instability (xii-xiii). The “intensity of religion in the United States” and its deep roots, with the “mistake” made by “secular advocates” of trying “to push Christianity out of the public square” “unleashed an evangelical, fundamentalist, and Pentecostal counterreformation that in some ways is still building” (xiii-xiv). Influence of Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series (xiv-xv). Historical similarities with Rome, imperial Spain, the Dutch Republic, and Britain (xv). Possibility that the U.S. is now experiencing

“an unsustainable credit bubble” (xv-xvi). “The extent to which politics in the United States—and especially the governing Republican coalition—deserves much of the blame for this fatal convergence is not only the book’s subject matter but its raison d’être” (xvi).

PART I: OIL AND AMERICAN SUPREMACY

Ch. 1: The Dependency Dilemma: Imported Oil and National Security. [On the U.S. “as vulnerable oil hegemon” (12).] Epigraphs: Kissinger, Spencer Abraham, Paul Roberts (3). As one of several “pivots” of power, the U.S. is engaged in a “resource war”: “military seizure of portions of the Middle East, expected by 2020 to have two-thirds of the world’s remaining oil resources” (3-6). Dutch control of whaling for oil (7-9). Petroleum and the Dutch, British, and Americans (9-11). Dutch undone after being “wind and water hegemon from 1590 to 1720s” (12-14). British undone after being “coal hegemon” from 1700 to 1914 (14-17). Oil’s pervasiveness in American culture (17-20). Peak Oil (21-24). Iraq as salvation for aging oil supermajors (25-27). Automotive companies’ woes exemplify America’s (27-30).

Ch. 2: The Politics of American Oil Dependence. [On “government subsidies and preferences, entrenched bureaucracies and interest groups, foreign relationships, political party coalitions” (17).] Epigraphs: Robert Engler, David Ignatius, BBC News (31). In the U.S. an “ingrained and possessive” “politics of oil dependence” (31-33). Oil becomes central to U.S. politics in the first half of the 20th century (34-36). “Car culture” attains its apogee 1945-70 (36-37). Oil and Eisenhower (37-38). And Nixon (38-40). The challenges of the mid-1970s oil “Rubicon”: U.S. production peak, OPEC, foreign nationalizations (40-42). Oil and Reagan-Bush (42). “Texification” of

U.S. presidential politics (cf. also American Dynasty) (43-46). Influence on U.S. foreign policy in early days of oil (46-51). Signs of developing nostalgia for “petroliana” (51-54). Are Americans unable to “turn back” from their “fuel habit”? (54-57). Energy’s influence on the 2004 Bush coalition (58-62). Biblical-mindedness as an additional pernicious influence (63-67).

Ch. 3: Trumpets of Democracy, Drums of Gasoline. [On “recurring Middle East war patterns” (17).] Bill Richardson, Asia Times, Peter Dale Scott, Bill Moyers (68). U.S. attack on Iraq’s intentions: “to fold oil objectives into the global war against terror . . . to cement the U.S. dollar’s hegemonic role in global oil sales . . . to allow the biblically minded Christian right to see [the invasion], at least partially, as a destruction of the new Babylon” (69). “Oil was a critical factor” (69). A “Hundred Years Oil War” over Middle Eastern oil, beginning in 1897 (70-74). Iraq oil maps and Iraq’s role in “rebuilding Anglo-American oil-company reserves, transformation of Iraq into an oil protectorate-cum-military base, and reinforcement of the global hegemony of the U.S. dollar” (75-78). U.S. “petro-imperialism” (78-81). The Caspian basin (81-82). Clinton and Iraq (82-83). Oil guides U.S. military force structure (following Michael T. Klare) (84-86). Convergence of “five political and policy endgames” as factors in Iraq: Peak Oil; oil companies need for reserves; threat to petrodollar system; climate-change worries; end-times mentality (87-88). Cheney’s role (88-91). Oil companies’ thinking (91-92). Concern to protect the dollar (92-94). Climate-change fears (94-95). End-times prophecies (95-96).

PART II: TOO MANY PREACHERS

Ch. 4: Radicalized Religion: As American as Apple Pie. Epigraphs: Roger Finke & Rodney Stark, R. Laurence Moore, and Mark A. Noll. The intense, personal, evangelical, biblically fundamentalist, nationalistic, and millenarian Christianity growing in the 20th century deserves more serious attention than it has received (99-104). The dynamic of American religion features a pattern of sects emphasizing

“salvation, spirituality, physical displays, founder’s claims to special revelation . . ., faith healing, and ‘holiness upon the land’” that emerge, become more worldly, and are replaced by new sects (cf. Rodney Stark & Roger Finke, The Churching of America, 1776-1990 [Rutgers UP, 1993]) (104-07). America’s peculiar waves of revivalism are Scottish in ancestry (108). Proliferation of sects passed in review (109-12). Standard accounts of American religion long underestimated the importance of the sects and missed what is a “sects up, mainline down” pattern in the U.S. (112-19). Note on American Catholicism (120-21). The influence of religion on American political history has been vastly underestimated (121-24). Tentatively proposes that “covenanting cultures” (British, Dutch, American—and also S. Africa, Ulster, and Israel?) induce “attendant psychologies” marked by “religious intensity, insecure history, and willingness to sign up with an Old Testament god of war for protection” (citing Conrad Cherry’s collection of studies entitled God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny [Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1998]; Anthony Smith, Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity [Oxford UP, 2002]; Donald H. Akenson, God’s Peoples [Cornell UP, 1992] (125-31).

Ch. 5: Defeat and Resurrection: The Southernization of America. Epigraphs: David Goldfield, Daniel W. Stowell, and Paul Harvey. The 2004 election as an indicator of a Southern ascendancy (133). The South-North divide repeats the Cavalier-Roundhead divide in the English Civil War (134). It is visible in the American Revolution (134-35). New England population derived from the English lowlands; the South, from “Britain’s Celtic fringe” (135). N. Carolina sociologist John Shelton Reed considers the South a “quasi-ethnic group” (135-36). Pre-Civil war tensions as “a Hidden Civil War” (136-37). Post-Civil war events (e.g. the civil rights movement, Vietnam) extended this pattern (138-40). Neo-Confederates and their theological underpinnings (140-41). Southerners’ religious interpretation of the Civil War and its aftermath, with “redemption” in the 1877 withdrawal of northern troops (141-48). The Southern

Baptist Convention (SBC), founded in an 1845 schism, was historically racially separatist, non-ecumenical, “a bulwark of sectional identity” with a “unique mixture of biblical conservatism and revivalism” (149-53). SBC congregations were the breeding ground of fundamentalism (153-54). It contained “an influential progressive element” in the 1950s and embraced Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, but moved toward an “aggressive political conservatism” culminating in the Texan-led 1979 election of new presiding officer (154-56). The SBC is now overtly fundamentalist (156-57). A case can be made for the SBC as “a sort of state or ‘established’ Church of the South” (157-59). The concept of the “Greater South” as a cultural-geographical region, based on work by geographer Raymond Gaskil and sociologist John Shelton Reed, is illuminated by Civil War history and the subsequent “demographic extension of the South” (159-66). “[S]outhern culture and evangelical, fundamentalist, and Pentecostal religion” has “piggybacked” on this extension, deemphasizing social approaches and elevating the importance of saving souls, the Bible, and coming to Jesus (“Southernization” has been analyzed by Oregon sociologist Mark Shibley) (166-70).

Ch. 6: The United States in a Dixie Cup: The New Religious and Political Battlegrounds. [On “a national Disenlightenment” (103).] Epigraphs: Richard Land, Susan Page, Dana Milbank, and David Domke. “For the first time, the United States has a political party that represents—some say over-represents—true-believing frequent churchgoers” (172). Andrew Jackson’s political coalition as forerunner (172-73). 2004 election led to increased attention to North-South divisions in the U.S. (173-74). The Republican Party’s and the South’s mutual embrace constitutes “the Great Reversal,” effected in the period 1944-1972, complicated by Watergate (which contributed to enabling “secular liberal pressure” for a “second reconstruction”) (174-82). Review of religious influences in the shift of voting patterns since the 1960s (182-93). “Religious geography helps to explain the deep-hued scarlet of the core red states” in 2000 & 2004 (193-204). Work of Martin

Marty & R. Scott Appleby, Charles Kimball, Bruce Lincoln, David S. Domke, and Bruce B. Lawrence suggests that in his response to the Sept. 11 attacks G.W. Bush has, in Domke’s words, combined “a religious fundamentalist worldview with political language to create a political fundamentalism” (204-08). While not like earlier theocracies, the U.S. is an “incipient theocracy” featuring (1) “fundamentalist and evangelical churches [that] play the dominant organization role in supporting the Republican party,” (2) religious influences abounding in education, politics, the military, and public policy; (3) churches mobilized in election campaigns; (4) dominant churches moving close to government; (5) a theologically motivated movement advocating elimination of the separation of church and state; and (6) an industry promoting “end-times theory and literature,” which, combined have “already brought about aspects of an American Disenlightenment” (208-17).

Ch. 7: Church, State, and National Defense. Epigraphs: Bill Moyers, The Economist, and John Danforth. Charles Kimball’s five criteria for religion becoming a factor contributing to national decline applied to Imperial Rome, Imperial Spain, the Dutch Republic, and the British Empire: (1) “Fervent religion” (220-25). (2) Faith’s attack on science (226-28). (3) Religion becoming a factor for economic and social polarization (228-29). (4) Millenarianism (229-31). (5) Religion’s role in hubristic imperial over-reaching in international commitments (231-32). John Ashcroft’s appointment indicative of a “theological correctness” movement (232-36). Theological influences on public policy (237-38). Sex, birth & death, and morality issues (239-42). Christian Reconstructionists attack church-state separation; efforts to control federal judiciary (243-46). Hostility to science (246-49). Permissive theology, rapture theology indifferent to problem solving (249-50). Holy war mentality, historically (250-51). Dispensationalist influence on U.S. foreign policy (252-54). British evangelism’s involvement with British imperialism (255-58). U.S. anti-Muslim activity purporting to be missionary (259-60). Crusader mentality in religious

preoccupations with the Middle East (260-62).

PART III: BORROWED PROSPERITY [Thesis: the “debt and credit revolution constitutes the third major peril hanging over the future of the United States” (268).]

Ch. 8: Soaring Debt, Uncertain Politics, and the Financialization of the United States. Epigraph: James Medoff & Andrew Harless, The Indebted Society. FIRE sector (finance, insurance, and real estate) in 2000 amounted to 20% of GDP, and is now the “new dominant economic sector” in the U.S. (265-68). Until the 1980s “serious borrowing” by the government was limited to major wars (268-70). 1980s embraced debt without attention to its noxiousness for older nations (270-73). 1960s blamed for “reattuning” American minds to “consumerism, stock-market booms, and borrowing” (273-75). In the 1980s the “twin deficits—the federal budget deficit and the current-account deficit” emerged as problems (275-77). Post 9/11, cut in interest rates by, unprecedentedly, Fed Chairman Greenspan (not Congress or the president, thus confirming “financialization”) led to a boom in real estate (277-80; see also 333). As the “credit-industrial complex” emerged, income inequality vastly increased (280-84). History shows that debt breeds crises; by tending to them, the federal government has picked finance to be the ascendant economic sector (285-88). Embrace as debt as an economic engine is a reversal of traditional attitudes (288-89). Its marks include increased borrowing, creating the petro-dollar system, permissiveness and deregulation, creation of a culture of overconsumption, steep rise in household indebtedness, a surge in middle-class bankruptcies (289-95). These developments represented the triumph of a market-idolizing conservatism over a conservatism awareness of greed and the lessons of history, and have created a vast credit bubble (296-97).

Ch. 9: Debt: History’s Unlearned Lesson. Epigraphs: Harry S Truman, William Wolman & Anne Colamosca, and Thomas G. Donlan (298). Historically, every nation finds a reason for believing history’s generalizations do not apply to it (298-99).

Spain is a special case; the normal historical progression (citing Brooks Adams, Will & Ariel Durant, Winston Churchill, and Fernand Braudel) is (1) agriculture, fishing, etc.; (2) commerce and industry; (3) finance (299-302). Financialization weakens economies (302). The example of Imperial Spain (302-05). Increasing prominence of financial sectors accompanied imperial apogee in Dutch and British cases (305-06). Rentier mentality in “later years” of a nation relies on a hubris that derives from past successes, but the resiliency that achieved tends to be lost (307-11). Though elites perceive the ascendancy of finance as progress, it leads to vulnerability, not strength (311-16). Blind faith in Adam Smith’s economic theory is likely to be a liability (316-18).

Ch. 10: Serial Bubbles and Foreign Debt Holders: American Embarrassment and Asian Opportunity. Epigraphs: Daniel Gross and Niall Ferguson (319). The dimensions of debt in the U.S. today (319-22). Isolating public from private debt is “untenable” (322-24). American households are now sufficiently “indentured” to impact the world economy should the housing bubble burst (324-29). Warren Buffet’s skepticism about finance (329-30). Immensity and complexity of early-21st-century finance (330-33). The shift of financial primacy to home values from 2001 to 2004 (333). “Grave but enigmatic” implications of most U.S. debt being held by foreigners (334-36). Structural weaknesses (e.g. dependency on imported petroleum (337-8). Present situation has no historical precedent (338). U.S.’s hubristic unilateralist response to Sept. 11 may lead to financial crisis; historical precedents: “great wars have been grim reapers of international hegemonies” (340) (339-43). The Social Security crisis is fueled by finance industry interests (344-45). It and Medicare may catalyze national discussions of debt in the short term, but in the long term oil dependency and over-indebtedness are likely to “control the parameters of the pension, old-age, and medical-coverage questions” (345-46).

Ch. 11: The Erring Republican Majority. Epigraphs: Paul Volcker, Stephen Roach, Matthew Simmons, and Garry Wills (347).

The Republican party has facilitated “U.S. oil vulnerability, excessive indebtedness, and indulgence of radical religion” and become “a vehicle of special interests that have become entrenched in crippling constituencies and biases” (348). The U.S. petrodollar system that “emerged from the Middle East upheaval between 1973 and 1981,” seems shaky after “the failure of the U.S. invasion of Iraq with respect to oil supplies” and the decline of the dollar vis-à-vis the euro 2003-2004 [N.B. this reversed course in Jan. 2005 (when the euro cost $1.36) and has been stable since July 2005, with the euro now at $1.21 on Apr. 14, 2006, ; acc. to Phillips, this was due to “federal tax legislation . . . to repatriate overseas assets in the manner of Britain between, say, 1915 and 1948” (361). –M.J.], and “[a]s in so many critical arenas, the U.S. government had no clear strategy” (349-52). The dependence of the Republican party on the religious right is most apparent in primary election struggles (353-57). U.S. finance is “substantially dependent” (investment strategist Raymond T. Dalio) on foreign borrowing (358-63). Faith-based politics underlies broad trends in U.S. policymaking, including anti-feminism (363-70). Domestically, political debate focuses on a “quadrangle” consisting of (1) stem-cell research, (2) abortion and women’s rights, (3) life-support, and (4) gays and marriage (371-75). Potential danger of unregulated credit derivatives and hedge funds (376-77). Exotic, speculative forms of finance abound in housing, mortgage, and credit-card markets and have given rise to justified trepidation about an enormous “credit bubble” that could burst and “yoke middle-class debtors” to “quasi-indentured status” (377-78). Such an event could undermine “world stability” and produce Asian, especially Chinese, ascendancy (378-82). In Spain, Holland, and Britain, the decline of religiosity is linked to disillusionment from their national declines (382-83). Religious Americans are often misinformed about the world (384-85). Sclerosis, accompanied by complacency, is also affecting economic and energy sectors (385-86). Historically, mediocre leadership tends to emerge in such situations (386-87).

Afterword: The Changing Republican Presidential Coalition. The Bush coalition is “too narrow to govern successfully” (388-

90). Analysis of the coalition “from a standpoint of religion, denominational biases, interest-group power, theological correctness, and the consequent national vulnerabilities these entail” shows that “the GOP support base in the North is slowly moving” in its direction, but it is nevertheless “fatally flawed from a national-interest standpoint”; nevertheless, it has “important allies” and the capacity to cause its “religious excess and overambition” to “become part of an epitaph for the twenty-first century United States” (390-94). Phillips’s “last three major books—Wealth and Democracy (2002), American Dynasty (2004), and American Theocracy (2006)—could be said to represent a trilogy of indictments” (394).

Acknowledgments. Wife Martha, “for her help in obtaining federal economic data.” Religious data: Glenmary Research Center and John Green, U. of Akron. Data on financial sector: Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research.

Notes. 34 pp.

Index. 32 pp.

[About the Author. Kevin Phillips was born on Nov. 30, 1940, and is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, Colgate University, the University of Edinburgh, and Harvard Law School. He was a strategist for the 1968 Nixon campaign, and wrote The Emerging Republican Majority in 1969. He is claims to have coined the terms “Sun Belt” and “New Right.” He lives in Goshen, Connecticut.]