Book Talk: "The End of America"

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

The premise of this book is that it’s a long letter to a friend (the “young patriot” of the subtitle). The motivator is what Wolf sees as the commonalities between the behaviours of the Bush-Cheney regime and all dictatorships of the past century as they moved from open to closed societies.

It’s a chilling collection of examples to reinforce what Wolf identifies as the ten classic steps that dictators take in this process. There’s not a lot that’s actually new, but seeing it all laid out and matched up to those ten steps shows just how far the Bush-Cheney regime has gone toward creating a closed society ruled by imperial fiat under a veneer of democracy.

Wolf talks of this process as a “fascist shift” to point out that the process is gradual and need not end with a military takeover, as in Italy in the 1920s or Germany in the 1930s. She correctly points out that the German Nazis came to power through democractic means, suggesting that fascists can do this anywhere, including the United States—through the application of the ten steps.

I thought Wolf sometimes soft-pedalled the threat from the Bush-Cheney regime, perhaps as if she was trying to sell the larger concept to a sceptical readership. As a critic of this regime from its very beginning, I felt she was pulling punches.

Also, the first part of the book reads like a self-help book, the type in which far too many pages are spent saying what the book will say, rather than, well, just saying it. For a book so short, it sometimes seemed to lack focus, as if elements were added to pad it out.

All of which, however, are mere quibbles because the documented subject matter speaks for itself. I suspect that Wolf’s approach is good for reaching readers who are somewhat less critical of the Bush-Cheney regime than I am, but who nevertheless have concerns about it. It’s a fast-paced read with well-documented material to quote later, including plenty of the facts we all wish we could summon when talking about the current regime.

This is not a dour listing of the current regime’s crimes against the US Constitution, however. Instead, it’s also a sort of call to action for American patriots to take back their country from the regime that’s worked to destroy it.

When real patriots work together to reclaim their freedom and liberty, Wolf writes, “there is no power that can hold these patriots back. I hope this emboldens you.” So do I.

What I read: End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot by Naomi Wolf. 176 pages, including notes, bibliography, index and end notes. Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont. ISBN 978-1-933392-79-0.

Amazon.com’s page for End of America.