@@ Bush's America: God, greed and gushers @@
Arash
March 24, 2006
God, greed and gushers
Book: "American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and
Borrowed Money in the 21st Century" By Kevin Phillips
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067003486X
By Andrew Preston
What motivates George W. Bush's America: God or greed? Both, according to U.S.
political writer Kevin Phillips, in a distinctly unholy alliance that threatens not
only U.S. prosperity and geopolitical supremacy, but American democracy itself. War
and terrorism take a back seat in this characteristically erudite, breathless and
unrelenting look at trends in recent U.S. politics and economics. As the book's
subtitle indicates, Phillips (American Dynasty, Wealth and Democracy) believes U.S.
vulnerability will come at the hands of radical religion, oil and borrowed money.
At first glance, the three would seem to have little in common. True, scholars since
at least Max Weber have traced the connections between religion and capitalism, and
it will come as no surprise that both play an inordinately large role in shaping the
contours of contemporary American life. Neither will it shock readers to learn that
the pernicious influence of oil distorts U.S. policy, both at home and abroad.
The novelty of Phillips's approach, then, lies not in his choice of threats but in
his treatment of them. In three separate but loosely connected sections, he
illustrates the extent to which God, oil and debt affect one another. U.S.
intervention in the Middle East is obviously driven in large part by the need to
maintain secure access to oil. But it is also determined by the theological
imperatives of the evangelicals and fundamentalists who comprise the religious right.
For their part, religious conservatives, who now account for a large proportion of
the Republicans' base, work in preparation for the "end times" of Armageddon, when
Jesus will return to earth, destroy the armies of Satan and lead the faithful to live
in a thousand years of peace. The catch is that the end times can only occur once the
Jews have governed Israel in security and prosperity — hence evangelical
Protestantism's passionate advocacy on behalf of Israel, and hence its support for
the ouster of the anti-Semitic evildoer who ruled over a second Babylon from his
opulent palaces in Baghdad.
In turn, the United States' oil-fuelled economy requires military expenditures and
encourages consumer spending at levels that necessitate heavy borrowing and the
accumulation of mountains of debt. In order to sustain such high levels of
government, corporate and personal debt, Americans have to rely on foreign central
banks, particularly in Asia, to maintain the dollar's role as the world's reserve
currency through the purchase of U.S. currency and bonds.
The catch, as Phillips rightly portrays it, is that if oil and religion lead the
United States into increasingly dangerous military adventures, or if the country's
fiscal situation becomes too precarious, U.S. creditors will begin to call in debts
and dump dollars, creating a precipitous economic and political slide that could
signal the end of U.S. hegemony. This is a nightmare scenario not only for Americans,
but for most of the world — including, most obviously, Canada —because U.S. decline
will come neither smoothly nor quietly, and will claim many more victims than just
Uncle Sam.
Thus, while the conclusions Phillips draws are sometimes glib and occasionally
implausible, they are often startlingly, alarmingly persuasive. For all these reasons
and more, American Theocracy should serve as Washington's wake-up call.
Kevin Phillips views the prevalence of government, corporate and personal debt as a
"global Fifth Horseman", and believes that Americans' "fuelish" oil-dependent
lifestyle, centered on booming suburbs and an enduring love affair with the
automobile, has led it astray. But like many other recent commentators, from Anatol
Lieven on the left to Andrew Bacevich on the right, he is most worried about the rise
of conservative Protestantism and its dominant role in the governing Republican
coalition.
It is easy to forget that American Protestantism, especially its evangelical wing,
was once one of the nation's most progressive forces. From women's suffrage to
working conditions to civil rights, it was religious politicians such as William
Jennings Bryan and theologians such as Walter Rauschenbusch who led the drive to
soften the harsher edges of American life. While evangelical liberals still exist —
author, activist and ethicist Jim Wallis, co-founder of Sojourners, comes to mind —
they are vastly outnumbered by their ideologically extremist conservative
counterparts.
But though Kevin Phillips does have an alarming case to make, it often comes across
as simply alarmist; that is, overstated, even exaggerated. For instance, that U.S.
Christianity is generally more conservative than it was a few decades ago is beyond
dispute. But is it a threat to U.S. democracy, or simply to the Republican Party?
Phillips, a former Nixon White House strategist and a devotee of Eisenhower-era
fiscal conservatism, unwittingly conflates the two. While the religious right is a
driving force for the Republicans, it is hardly that influential in the nation at
large. After all, Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and won re-election by a
historically razor-thin margin — with both victories coming against the easy prey of
decidedly poor campaigners. Had Bill Clinton been allowed to run again in 2000, few
doubt he would have beaten Bush handily.
In addition, creationists have lost their battle in Dover, Pennsylvania, and have
even found it tougher going than anticipated in Kansas. Congressional Republicans are
beginning to rebel against the extreme supply-side economics of the White House. And
many from both parties agree that the U.S. military has reached the beginning of the
end in Iraq.
Thus the religious right may have overreached itself. American evangelicals were
traditionally the strongest supporters of the First Amendment's separation of church
and state, for it left the church free from the burdens of governing to shape its own
destiny. Indeed, one of the reasons organized religion has flourished in the United
States is that, unlike in many European countries, the church has never had a hand in
governing. When the state is periodically discredited, as is inevitable in the
tricky, inherently fallible art of governance, the church escapes blame. There is
little occasion for religious disillusionment when the church is protected from
itself in this way.
Because American evangelical and fundamentalist Protestantism have had so deep a role
in governing since 2001, it is largely on the hook for the Bush administration's many
failures in domestic and foreign policy. With this political convergence of the
sacred and the secular, the influence of the religious right may already have
crested.
Yet even if the influence of religious conservatives does not wane, what Phillips
reveals is not the perpetual dominance of any one party, but the deep polarization of
U.S. political life. The ranks of Bush's opponents equal that of his supporters, and
if weren't for the rallying effect of 9/11 and the so-called "War on Terror",
analysts might be dissecting the one-term lifespan of the second President Bush.
Moreover, the convergence of oil, money and religion in U.S. foreign policy is
nothing new. The influence of oil led the Eisenhower administration to overthrow the
democratically elected (Mohammad Mosaddegh) government of Iran in 1953
(http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB126). Religion helped lead it to support
the installation of a client state in South Vietnam the following year. Both
Eisenhower and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, were as ostentatiously
devout as Bush has been. But instead of implanting a "theocracy", the term Phillips
uses to describe politics today, the pious 1950s triggered a revolution that resulted
in the swinging sixties — which in turn provoked the conservative backlash that has
reached its peak under Bush.
These developments may hurt the Republican Party, but the long-term damage they can
inflict on the United States itself is limited. There is hope, then, for U.S.
liberals. Should the Democrats ever recover their nerve, discover their voice and
find their leader, we might yet witness the emerging Democratic majority.
* Andrew Preston is a member of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs
(http://www.ciia.org), he also teaches history at the University of Victoria in
Canada (http://web.uvic.ca/history/aboutus/faculty/preston.html), and is currently a
2005-2006 Olin Fellow at Yale.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060324.bktheo0324/BNStory/SpecialEvents/home
Related links:
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Book Review: American Theocracy
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/8bde5a2e4f1f4b1d
American Theocracy: Christian Zionist White House
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/d7a08da713d52ac7
Kevin Phillips talks with Bill Moyers
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/phillips.html
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_phillips.html
Kevin Phillips: The Bushes, an 'American Dynasty'
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1595494
"Wealth and Democracy" by Kevin Phillips
http://www.wealthanddemocracy.com/
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kevin_Phillips/Kevin_Phillips_page.html
Dynasties and Crony Capitalists
http://www.paulagordon.com/shows/phillips/
http://www.nationalvanguard.org/images/teaser/mearsheimer_and_walt.jpg
John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt
Harvard study shows role of Zionism in U.S. foreign policy
The Lobby
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8730
The Israel Lobby
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011/$File/rwp_06_011_walt.pdf
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