- Phillips, Kevin.
American Theocracy.
New York: Viking, 2006.
ISBN 0-670-03486-X.
-
In 1969, the author published
The Emerging Republican
Majority, which Newsweek called
“The political bible of the Nixon Era.” The book
laid out the “Sun Belt” (a phrase he coined)
strategy he developed as a senior strategist for Richard
Nixon's successful 1968 presidential campaign, and argued
that demographic and economic trends would reinforce the
political power of what he termed the “heartland”
states, setting the stage for long-term Republican dominance
of national politics, just as FDR's New Deal coalition had
maintained Democratic power (especially in the Congress) for
more than a generation.
In this book he argues that while his 1969 analysis was
basically sound and would have played out much as he forecast,
had the Republican steamroller not been derailed by Watergate
and the consequent losses in the 1974 and 1976 elections,
since the Reagan era, and especially during the presidency
of George W. Bush, things have gone terribly wrong, and that
the Republican party, if it remains in power, is likely to lead
the United States in disastrous directions, resulting in the
end of its de facto global hegemony.
Now, this is a view with which I am generally sympathetic, but if the
author's reason for writing the present volume is to persuade people
in that direction, I must judge the result ineffectual if not
counterproductive. The book is ill-reasoned, weakly argued,
poorly written, strongly biased, scantily documented, grounded in
dubious historical analogies, and rhetorically structured in
the form of “proof by assertion and endless repetition”.
To start with, the title is misleading if read without the subtitle,
“The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed
Money in the 21st Century”, which appears in 8 point sans-serif
type on the cover, below an illustration of a mega-church reinforcing
the the words “American Theocracy” in 60 and 48 point
roman bold. In fact, of 394 pages of main text, only 164—about
40%—are dedicated to the influence of religion on politics.
(Yes, there are mentions of religion in the rest, but there is
plenty of discussion of the other themes in the “Too Many
Preachers” part as well; this book gives the distinct impression
of having been shaken, not stirred.) And nothing in that part, or
elsewhere in the book provides any evidence whatsoever, or even
seriously advances a claim, that there is a genuine movement toward,
threat of, or endorsement by the Republican party of theocracy, which
Webster's Unabridged Dictionary
defines as:
- A form of government in which God or a deity is recognized as
the supreme civil ruler, the God's or deity's laws being
interpreted by the ecclesiastical authorities.
- A system of government by priests claiming a divine
commission.
- A commonwealth or state under such a form or system of
government.
And since Phillips's argument is based upon the Republican party's
support among religious groups as diverse as Southern Baptists,
northern Midwest Lutherans, Pentecostals, Mormons, Hasidic Jews, and
Eastern Rite and traditionalist Catholics, it is difficult to imagine
how precisely how the feared theocracy would function, given how
little these separate religious groups agree upon. It would have to
be an “ecumenical theocracy”, a creature for which I can
recall no historical precedent.
The greater part of the book discusses the threats to the U.S.
posed by a global peak in petroleum production and temptation
of resource wars (of which he claims the U.S. intervention in
Iraq is an example), and the explosion of debt, public and
private, in the U.S., the consequent housing bubble, and the
structural trade deficits which are flooding the world with
greenbacks. But these are topics which have been discussed
more lucidly and in greater detail by authors who know far more
about them than Phillips, who cites secondary and tertiary
sources and draws no novel observations.
A theme throughout the work is comparison of the present situation
of the U.S. with previous world powers which fell into
decline: ancient Rome, Spain in the seventeenth century, the
Netherlands in the second half of the eighteenth century, and
Britain in the first half of the twentieth. The parallels here,
especially as regards fears of “theocracy” are strained
to say the least. Constantine did not turn Rome toward
Christianity until the fourth century
A.D.,
by which time, even Gibbon concedes, the empire had been in decline
for centuries. (Phillips seems to have realised this part of
the way through the manuscript and ceases to draw analogies with
Rome fairly early on.) Few, if any, historians would consider
Spain, Holland, or Britain in the periods in question theocratic
societies; each had a clear separation between civil authority
and the church, and in the latter two cases there is plain
evidence of a decline in the influence of organised
religion on the population as the nation's power approached a peak and
began to ebb. Can anybody seriously contend that the
Anglican church was responsible for the demise of the British
Empire? Hello—what about the two world wars, which were
motivated by power politics, not religion?
Distilled to the essence (and I estimate a good editor could cut a
third to half of this text just by flensing the mind-numbing
repetition), Phillips has come to believe
in the world view and policy prescriptions advocated by the
left wing of the Democratic party. The Republican party does
not agree with these things. Adherents of traditional
religion share this disagreement, and consequently they predominately
vote for Republican candidates. Therefore, evangelical and
orthodox religious groups form a substantial part of the
Republican electorate. But how does that imply any trend toward
“theocracy”? People choose to join a particular
church because they are comfortable with the beliefs it
espouses, and they likewise vote for candidates who advocate
policies they endorse. Just because there is a correlation
between preferences does not imply, especially in the absence
of any evidence, some kind of fundamentalist conspiracy to take
over the government and impose a religious dictatorship. Consider
another divisive issue which has nothing to do with religion: the
right to keep and bear arms. People who consider the individual
right to own and carry weapons for self-defence are highly probable
to be Republican voters as well, because that party is more closely
aligned with their views than the alternative. Correlation
is not evidence of causality, not to speak of collusion.
Much of the writing is reminiscent of the lower tier of the
UFO literature. There are dozens of statements like this
one from p. 93 (my italics),
“There are no records, but Cheney's
reported early 2001 plotting may well have
touched upon the related peril to the dollar.”
May I deconstruct? So what's really being said here is,
“Some conspiracy theorist, with no evidence to
support his assertion, claims that Cheney was plotting
to seize Iraqi oil fields, and it is possible that this
speculated scheme might have been motivated by fears
for the dollar.”
There are more than thirty pages of end notes set in small
type, but there is less documentation here than strains the
eye. Many citations are to news stories in collectivist
legacy media and postings on leftist advocacy Web sites.
Picking page 428 at random, we find 29 citations, only five
of which are to a total of three books, one by the present
author.
So blinded is the author by his own ideological bias that
he seems completely oblivious to the fact that a right-wing
stalwart could produce an almost completely parallel screed about
the Democratic party being in thrall to a coalition of
atheists, humanists, and secularists eager to use
the power of the state to impose their own radical agenda.
In fact, one already has. It is
dubious that shrill polemics of this variety launched back
and forth between the trenches of an increasingly polarised
society promote the dialogue and substantive debate which is
essential to confront the genuine and daunting
challenges all its citizens ultimately share.
March 2007 