The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend In my travels across the country, I have heard from citizens of all backgrounds who feel alienated from the Founders' idea that they are the ones who must lead; they are the ones who must decide and confront and draw a line. They are the ones who matter. This book is written for them. Such citizens need the keys to, the understanding of, the Founders' radical… Product details and pricing info |
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194 Customer Reviews Posted
- A Complete Hash, By Someone Who Should Stick With What She Knows
- This is a thoroughly goofy book. For someone who likes to preach about the sins of inaccurate public commentary these days, Wolf gets quite a bit wrong. Adam Gaddahn was not charged in a sealed indictment - his indictment was very public, He was not indicted for exercising his First Amendment rights. It was for joining Al Qaida and working to kill Americans. Ward Churchill was not fired for his post-9/11 statements, but for plagiarism. If James Yee is threatened with prosecution for discussing his experiences, that has not deterred him from writing a book. Brandon Mayfield was never charged with a crime. Wrong again.
The hardest thing for me to understand is how Naomi can defend the rights of people like Gaddahn and Churchill yet argue that Presidential signing statements are wrongheaded. These statements merely provide the public with the current Chief Executive's view of legislation, and they are the Executive Branch's equivalent of legislative history. If more verbal content is always good, why does she view Presidential signing statements with such hostility? It's undoubtedly because the current occupant of the White House is a Republican. When Jimmy Carter was pontificating about human rights, his Presidential statements were welcomed. In other words, Wolf's complaints amount to content discrimination.
To write this book, Wolf had to go back and read about all the things she ignored at Yale, when she was too busy getting arrested protesting American efforts to prevent Salvadorans from falling under Communism to truly understand the perils that existed in the 1980s. She interweaves her narrative with a bunch of observations about the rise of Nazism in Germany and Mussolini in Italy, but her analogies - like how the Nazis used the term "homeland" - are odd. To analogize the current American leadership to Soviet leaders is ironic, given which side so many of the necons of the 1980s were on (compared to the author)
It seems that Wolf should stick with what she knows - beauty, lifestyle, and what colors Al Gore should wear to appeal to women like her. When she gets into the national security sandbox, her arguments are not convincing. Are Americans truly at risk at being swept off the streets and held incommunicado at the say-so of the President, with no right to legally challenge their detention? How many Americans have suffered this fate? ZERO. Hamdi? Padilla? Al Masri? There are legal opinions discussing their detention. Lindh? He was prosecuted in the American criminal justice system. Oh, and Padilla was as well.
I agree that things are not good right now, but I disagree with Wolf on the identification of the problems. That books like this one can generate so many positive reviews shows that we indeed live in dangerous times. - 2008-10-13, 9 of 27 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Right and Left
- Here is a book on preserving liberty which can be appreciated by both right and left. The common view is that the fearful populist 'center' is the majority and the mainstream -- between right and left extremes. But what if the political map is incorrectly drawn? What if the more important dimension has been intentionally ignored by populist fear-mongering media?
If the more important dimension has fear and fascism at the bottom and courage and liberty at the top, then Naimi Wolf and Ron Paul are at the top and George Bush and Nancy Pelosi are at the bottom.
This excellent book will appeal to those who value courage and liberty.
Rex Fowler - 2008-10-13, 1 of 2 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- A Timely Warning
- This is a wake-up call to all patriotic Americans, which we all owe it to our country to read and heed!
Naomi Wolf lists ten steps to converting a democracy to a fascist dictatorship. In chapter 1, she writes: "Both Italian and German fascisms came to power legally and incrementally in functioning democracies; both used legislation, cultural pressure, and baseless imprisonment and torture to subordinate and control the individual, whether the individual supported the regime inwardly or not. Both were rabidly antidemocratic, not as a side sentiment but as the basis of their ideologies; and yet both aggressively used the law to pervert and subvert the law." In chapters 2 thru 11 Wolf describes in detail how the G.W. Bush administration has nearly completed the ten steps:
2. Invoke an External and Internal Threat
3. Establish Secret Prisons
4. Develop a Paramilitary Force
5. Surveil Ordinart Citizens
6. Infiltrate Citizens Groups
7. Arbitrarily Detain and Release Citizens
8. Target Key Individuals
9. Restrict the Press
10. Cast Criticism as "Espionage" and Dissent as "Treason"
11. Subvert the Rule of Law
THIS BOOK SHOULD BE IN EVERY HIGH SCHOOL, COLLEGE, AND PUBLIC LIBRARY, along with Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, all of which cover further aspects of the same subject, and The Army of the Republic: A Novel, a rousing good story which gives a more graphic illustration of what the Bush administration is trying to do to America.
watziznaym@gmail.com - 2008-10-12, 3 of 4 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Organize, and fill the streets with protest
- Can't wait to get the book. Last night I watch the you tube video about this book. I was really impressed with what she had to say. The message at the end, about how it took all of us to turn our heads while getting to this day; and it will take all of us to now get involved to make any difference. This gets to the heart of the problem. We are all to blame.
Here is a link to the 48 minute video by Naomi Wolf: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjALf12PAWc
So, organize and fill the streets with protest. Call your congressman, have the criminals dragged out by the hair, and prosecute. Run an election in your area against your representative if they do not listen. Then go after all the ones who helped them, and drag them out by the hair. When you hear someone repeat the rhetoric from these criminals or the news, drag them out by the hair. Now, we can build something for all to look forward to. And when the world sees that we are taking inventory of all the bad seeds, we may just get some help from others. Until then; it is you, and me dear.
Other good sources: Amy Goodman, David Swanson, Bill Moyers, Howard Zinn. - 2008-10-08, 1 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Must Read!
- This is a great book. Very informative, a little bit scary. I purchased extra copies to share with family & friends. This information must get out to everyone.
- 2008-10-06, 2 of 2 people found this review helpful, Rated:
