Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 191
 Great book, but..... October 27, 2008
Tony M. Evasco (Lincoln, Nebraska)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I think she makes a few rather vague comparisons in a couple chapters that I felt took away some of her credibility.. There were several examples where she simply added a short tidbit of information to enforce her thesis without telling the reader why it was important.
In short, if you're looking for a detailed analysis comparing the shifts of former Fascist countries to the recent shifts in the United States, then this book is not for you. It does, however, provide a good starting point for your own research (her listing of footnote sources and bibliography span 17 pages).
Overall though, I believe this book to be well written and researched, and would recommend it to everyone concerned with preserving your constitutional liberties here in America. I look forward to reading her newest book, "Give Me Liberty."
 Concise and compelling October 15, 2008
Jack Dharma (Long Beach, CA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I thought I'd heard all I could of the political, military and social commentary of our time, but I gave this book a chance.
What an excellent book, compelling, well-voiced and the most concise presentation of the socio-pilitical ills brought about by our current administration. Scary and provoking.
 A Complete Hash, By Someone Who Should Stick With What She Knows October 13, 2008
Jeffrey A. Breinholt (Washington DC)
4 out of 17 found this review helpful
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.
Right and Left October 13, 2008
William R. Fowler (Eldorado Springs, CO USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
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
A Timely Warning October 12, 2008
watzizname (Murfreesboro, Tennessee)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
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
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