About "American Theocracy" by Kevin Phillips

I was fascinated by the detailed (and perhaps slightly overstated)
parallels between past great powers just before their decline and the
United States right now: the rise of intense religiosity, the sense of
being on a mission for God, the shift from making things (manufacturing)
to manuevering money (finance), and the rise of debt.
Also by the deep roots of the specific type of religion that goes
back to England, Scotland, and Holland in the late 1500s to 1600s and
leads all the way to the current disaster in Iraq.
I speculate that one factor in Kevin Phillips moving from the prophet of
the rising Republican Party in the Nixon days to the deep critic of that
party now is the fact that he is a Catholic conservative with a taste
for tradition and humble earnestness, not an evangelical or fundamentalist conservative with a
taste for Armegaddon and triumphalism.