"Is the U.S. at a Turning Point? Oil, Debt, Religion and Geopolitics"

Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2006 @ 7 p.m.
Location: Rooke Chapel

Kevin Phillips

One of America’s foremost political analysts, for more than three decades, Kevin Phillips has been consistently and “transcendentally right” (as one reviewer has put it) about the dynamics of political change in America and an avid analyst of the role of wealth in democracy. Phillips’ books have influenced presidential campaigns and changed the way America sees itself.

In his two most recent New York Times bestsellers, American Dynasty and Wealth and Democracy, Mr. Phillips established himself as a powerful critic of the political and economic forces that are ruling—and imperiling—the U.S.  In his latest book, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, Phillips assails the particular combination of an economy dependent on oil-based technology and ever-increasing debt, and a political coalition led by radical religion. As he will argue in his talk, this combination, he believes, may be leading us to the brink of disaster, and we must change course now to avoid dire consequences.

Kevin Phillips was the strategic advisor to President Richard Nixon. One of Phillips’ first books, The Emerging Republican Majority, set the political strategy for Nixon’s presidential campaign in 1968 and transformed the American political landscape for the generation that followed. Today, Phillips is a regular commentator for National Public Radio and a contributing columnist to the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal.