BuzzFlash Reviews

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We were big fans and promoters of Naomi Wolf's last book,
"The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot," -- and Wolf credits BuzzFlash with helping get "The End of America" rolling into the best seller list. In fact, Wolf has contacted us to let us know of her new book, and to offer us another interview, which we will follow through on shortly.

You can find out a lot about Wolf's fears for and love of democracy in our BuzzFlash discussion with her about "The End of America." She is an impassioned, persuasive author whose latest writings serve as a canary in the coal mind about the erosion of our great experiment in Constitutional rule by the governed.

So we were excited to learn from Wolf that she has a sequel to "The End of America" hitting the bookstands: "Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries." She got us from "Hello" with the title alone. It is prima facie evidence of how far we have strayed as a nation from our revolutionary roots that the word "revolution" has become a pejorative when applied to contemporary politics. To England, the founders of this nation were revolutionaries and radicals. Yet today, adherence to the status quo and to an authoritarian state is considered "patriotic." King George no doubt would support the same notion.

So, when Wolf announces a "Handbook for American Revolutionaries," she is truly restoring us to the Spirit of '76. The status quo has become the restoration of Tory principles of wealth, privilege, and paternalistic "unitary authority" monarchal rule.

Yes, "Give me Liberty" is the true cry of patriots who heed the actions and words of the radicals who founded America by breaking away from rule by those of entrenched power and wealth.

Wolf end the introduction to her new book with these words:

Today we have most of our rights still codified on paper -- but these documents are indeed "only paper" if we no longer experience them viscerally, if their violation no longer infuriates us. We can be citizens of a republic; we can have a Constitution and a Congress; but if we, the people, have fallen asleep to the meaning of the Constitution and to the radical implications of representative and direct democracy, then we aren't really Americans anymore.

So we must listen to the original revolutionaries and to current ones as well, and explain their ideas clearly to new generations. To hear the voices of the original vision and the voices of those modern heroes, here in the U.S. and around the world, who are true heirs to the American Revolution is to feel your wishes change. "[Freedom] liberated us the day we stopped living in a world where 'truth' and 'falsehood' were, like everything else, the property of the State. And for the most part, this liberation did not stop when we were sentenced to prison," wrote Sharansky.26 "I was not born to be forced," wrote Henry David Thoreau. "I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest...they only can force me to obey a higher law than I."27 You want to stay in that room where these revolutionaries are conversing in this electrifying way among themselves. It feels painful but ultimately cleansing and energizing. You want to be more like them; then you realize that maybe you can be -- then finally you realize that you already are.

Our "America," our Constitution, our dream, when properly felt within us, does more than "defend freedom." It clears space to build the society that allows for the highest possible development of who we ourselves personally were meant to be.

We have to rise up in self-defense and legitimate rebellion. We need more drastic action than e-mails to Congress.

We need the next revolution.

And she also states in the introduction:

What I had called a "fascist shift" in the United States, projections I had warned about as worst-case scenarios, was now surpassing my imagination: in 2008, thousands of terrified, shackled illegal immigrants were rounded up in the mass arrests which always characterize a closing society;1 news emerged that the 9/11 report had been based on evidence derived from the testimonies of prisoners who had been tortured -- and the tapes that documented their torture were missing -- leading the commissioners of the report publicly to disavow their own findings;2 the Associated Press reported that the torture of prisoners in U.S.-held facilities had not been the work of "a few bad apples" but had been directed out of the White House;3 the TSA "watch list," which had contained 45,000 names when I wrote my last book, ballooned to 755,000 names and 20,000 were being added every month;4 Scott McClellan confirmed that the drive to war in Iraq had been based on administration lies;5 HR 1955, legislation that would criminalize certain kinds of political thought and speech, passed the House and made it to the Senate;6 Blackwater, a violent paramilitary force not answerable to the people, established presences in Illinois and North Carolina and sought to get into border patrol activity in San Diego.7

The White House has established, no matter who leads the nation in the future, U.S. government spying on the emails and phone calls of Americans -- a permanent violation of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment.8 The last step of the ten steps to a closed society is the subversion of the rule of law. That is happening now. What critics have called a "paper coup" has already taken place.

Yes, the situation is dire. But history shows that when an army of citizens, supported by even a vestige of civil society, believes in liberty -- in the psychological space that is "America" -- no power on earth can ultimately suppress them.

We all need to join that army of the founders of the nation to restore their vision to a land that has lost its way in greed, authoritarian rule, and the stultifying status quo.

Our country was founded on revolutionary idealistic principles of freedom and liberty, not on who could pocket the most money.



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