In his two most recent books, American Dynasty and Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips established him-self as a powerful critic of the political and economic forces that rule-and imperil-the United States, tracing the ever more alarming path of the emerging Republican majority's rise to power. Now Phillips takes an uncom-promising view of the newest stage of the GOP majority: an inept and weakly led coalition, dominated by religious zealotry, that is losing America the world's respect-and endangering her future.

From ancient Rome to the British Empire, Phillips demon-strates that every world-dominating power has been brought down by an overlapping set problems: a fool-ish combination of global overreach, militant religion, diminishing resources, and ballooning debt. It is exactly this nexus of ills that has come to define America's political and economic identity at the start of this century, Matching his command of history with a penetrating analysis of contemporary politics, Phillips surveys a century of foreign policy and wars in the Middle East, showing how all, to one degree or another, reflected our ever-growing preoccupation with oil. Today, that danger-ous inheritance includes clumsy miscalculations, the ruinous occupation of lraq, and sky-high oil prices.

He then turns to the surge of fundamentalist and evangelical religion in the United States, outlining the way a long tradition of radical and sectarian sectarian religion has taken an unprecedented role George W. Bush, as more and more Republicans think in apocalyptic terms and seek to shape domestic and foreign policy around religion. Finally, he documents how Wall Street and the business interests so closely allied with Washington have discarded the principles of sound finance that once characterized Republican fiscal policy and have literally mortgaged the country's economic health to financial speculation, accompanied by and unprecedented level of public and private debt.

Oil, religion, and finance are not new elements in U.S. Politics. But as phillips makes clear with his formidable command fact. And his long expe-rience as a political strategist and observer, we are now in new and dangerous territory. The Bush coalition has resulted in a dearth of candor and serious strategy-a paralysis of policy and govemment unable to fovem. If lef unchecked, the same forces will bring a preacher-ridden debt-bloated, energy-crippled America to its knees. With an eye on the past and a searing a searing vision of the future, phillips confirms what too many Americans are still unwill-ing to admit about the depth of our misgovernment.

 

KEVIN PHILLIPS, a former Republican strategist, has been a political and economic commentator for more than three decades. He writes for the Los Angeles Times as Well as Harper's Magazine and Time. His thirteen books include the New York Times bestsellers American Dynasty, The Politics of Rich and Poor. And Wealth and Democracy. He lives in Litchfield, Connecticut.