The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot | Naomi Wolf

The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot | Naomi Wolf | a must have - more optomistic than the title would suggest

books:

The End of America...

	The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot Naomi Wolf Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 175 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Money and Greed - The Twin Fuhrers

One thing not mentioned in Ms. Wolf's book, but would have hit home, is that fascism would thrive in times of financial crisis, when the people are desperate for any kind of change. Look around, class, do you see a country that is facing a financial crisis anytime soon? Don't look too hard...

Everything else is spot-on and eerily comparable to the nightly news broadcasts. She compares our current situation to the Red Scare of the 1950s, Japanese internment during WWII, the infiltration of government agents into peaceful protests. She mentions COINTELPRO attacking civil rights workers while not in a time of war. And while America was busy doing that, they launched a war in Vietnam over an imaginary event. This time the event was real, but the enemy and his WMDs were imaginary.

Maybe it's not fascism like we know it. Fascist regimes have always had megalomaniacs for leaders, but not this time. Any puppet will do. (You've seen him speak freely without cue cards, right?) Just do the bidding of what's best for capitalism. There are a lot of strings being pulled by a lot of puppeteers. Any candidate will do. Maybe money and greed are the leaders this time around. How many Cadillac Escalades does your neighbor really need? How many jet skis? How many sports cars? How big of a house? How much luxury? How much credit card debt will be enough for the Twin Fuhrers?

Perhaps the only way to assassinate the leaders is to pay off your cards and simplify your lifestyles. It could be voluntary, but if the economy has anything to say about it it may just be mandatory. Simplify, or you'll start to see giant posters of your leaders everywhere you go...(Hint: they would look a lot like billboards for McDonald's and Wal-Mart.)

for more information click here

a must have - more optomistic than the title would suggest

This is a great book. A quick read and yet the message stay with you. After she makes her compelling case that the country we once knew is no longer, she gives you a list of 10 organizations aware of the problems and working to solve them and she gives you 10 things that you can do on your own. I have given it to people who have in turn given it to others. Buy one for yourself and one to pass around. The Message MUST be HEARD!

Pretty good observations!

Well, I wouldn't say the title of "End of America" is a good title. Heck, our founders embraced genocide of Native Americans, treated women as chattel and made slavery legal. Not exactly "freedom" which the author, Wolf, claims we are losing. Plus, I take issue with her claim that Adam Gadahn, as a US citizen, was not guilty of anything, because the Constitution protects his free speech. Seems to me he crossed the line by being a full-fledged member of al Qaeda and inciting war.

However, she does document some pretty scary directions toward a form of fascism which we have headed after 9-11. Like:

1. Using the term "Homeland" for the Department of Homeland Security. It is not too unlike the German word, "heimat" embraced by the Nazis.

2. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 which created a separate justice system for trying alien enemy combatants and using broad definitions for 'torture' and 'materially supporting hostilities'.

3. The evolvement of a 'security industrial complex', not purely ideological, but where profit is front and center with our government.

4. Secret prisons like Gitmo were stocked with people taken prisoner by paying Afghan warlords up to $5000 bounties. So, it is likely some of the captures happened only because of the financial incentive, not because they were likely guilty of anything.

5. Governments that do broadly define torture have a tendency to use it not so much to gain accurate information, since experts doubt how effective it is at that, but to obtain false confessions, which torture is good at doing.

6. Secret Service and White House staffers recently became more likely to threaten protestors with criminal prosecution. The author gives a couple of actual situations of note.

7. In 2001, the National Science Foundation stated that grants would no longer go to research based solely on science. Politics was also used by the Nazis to put pressure on the scientific community.

8 The slippery slope of expanding slanderous statements to acts of treason.

9. The 2007 Defense Authorization Bill which makes it easier for the president to declare martial law, weakening the power of the states to use their militias, the National Guards.

10. Weakening the constitutional right of habeas corpus, particularly of note, Attorney General Gonzales testifying before Congress that taking away some individual situations of habeas corpus does not invalidate the overall general right. Thus, making it easier for the executive branch to sidestep the Constitution.

So, despite some weaknesses, I do think the book is worthwhile, making the reader more informed about some directions we have been headed in, and allowing the reader to reflect on whether we have gone a bit too far.

for more information click here

Solid history; overblown argument

The premise of the book is fairly straightforward: there is a blueprint of how turn a society from a democratic one to a totalitarian/repressive one, and it seems that the Bush administration has been using some of the techniques found in that blueprint since 9/11. The author comes up with this blueprint by looking into how fascist and communist regimes changed their societies respectively. The history is good, but the idea that Bush has embarked on this journey is a bit much. Although it is important to mention that the author never compares Bush to Hitler or Stalin, rather that Bush seems to be adopting some of the techniques of their program at times, she nonetheless goes too far.

If you're wondering what some of the blueprint is like, it revolves around things like suppressing the press (which Naomi has little evidence to show Bush has been doing), destroying habeas corpus (Bush is guilty of this to an extent), and instilling fear in the general population (i.e. terrorists are everywhere).

Although Naomi does hit the nail on the head about some things, she nonetheless blows it all out of proportion. American history is full of times when the government suppressed civil liberties during times of war. These are not mentioned in her book because she knows that if she paints America as an imperfect nation, then Bush looks less like a fascist and more like a President reacting to the seriousness of the times. What about the Alien and Sedition Acts? The entire Lincoln presidency? The Red Scare? The Internment of the Japanese during World War II? COINTELPRO? The truth is every nation, no matter how democratic and free or repressive and violent, has sacrificed some amount of liberty during war. Nonetheless, books like this are published, the NYT prints out articles totally undermining the War on Terrorism, and people everywhere on the internet call Bush a fascist and the next Hitler, and nothing happens. It's not that we should allow this administration to walk all over us, or that we shouldn't be vigilant, but rather that we have to look at this in context. America is still a very open society and will continue to be. The fact that so many people are worried about this administration shows you that we're doing something right in our schools when we tell our kids not to trust a single authority.

Naomi's book is worth a buy in my opinion, even if you know it's a stretch in the end. It's good because it does indeed give you a blueprint of how a fascist or communist society takes a stranglehold on its people. So if you're interested in that at least, then buy it. But if you're looking for a reason to conclude this administration is guilty of terrible crimes against liberty, then think again.

for more information click here

Interesting Read

This book shows similarity between today and the past in countries like Italy and Germany. Those who ignore the past will repeat it.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

products you might be interested in