America is on the brink of collapse.  This is a wake-up-America book that is dedicated “to the millions of Republicans who have opposed the Bush dynasty and the disenlightenment in the 2000 and 2004 elections.”

 And that of course is the underlying power of American Theocracy: Phillips is a Republican.  Early on he enthusiastically—and correctly—forecast the national drift to conservatism in “The Emerging Republican Majority.”  In 1968 Phillips was influential in Nixon’s victory and later in his administration. Newsweek labeled his book “The political Bible of the Nixon Era.” Central factors to Phillips predictions were 1) the southern movement of northern industries, and 2) the disregard for—and alienation from—religion by the secular liberal Left.  Although the combination of a Mississippi Joe-6-pack and an Oral Roberts end of times preacher with a Wall St. Country Club Episcopalian was, well, unnatural…it was an “electoral opportunity” and bothered Phillips not at all.

 It does now. Phillips book is about Empire Collapsing and the theocracy factor is central. It’s the first time in our nation’s history that a political party can be called religious, but the GOP is, by several criteria, all fully documented and put in historical perspective by Phillips. Religious excess has been a dominant factor in the fall of previous world economic leaders Rome, Spain, and England.

 Besides theocracy, Phillips points to two other collapse factors that threaten America, both also having strong historical precedence.  The first is a natural resource depletion—in modern America, oil—with an intricately evolved dependence on it and foreign policy built around it. The other—and third—foreboding factor is America’s debt.  From huge domestic credit card debt to soaring Federal Deficits, America is in debt like never before. And maybe no one really knows how economics work, but there are signs. In 1950 manufacturing was 3 times as big as banking. Today the financial sector—those who move money around—is twice as big as manufacturing—those who actually make things.

 The 3 together, oil dependence, religious excess, and reliance on borrowed money, all speak loudly (with 33 pages of footnotes) on a change coming.