Naomi Wolf and Her New Book

Renowned feminist author Naomi Wolf has recently written a book titled The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007). She recently appeared on a C-Span discussion of this book, giving me my first opportunity to examine her worldview and opinions.

Naomi Wolf came across as a talented, persuasive, and articulate speaker. The essence of her book is that there are ten ways that a governing regime can take to destroy an open society (such as ours) with its freedoms (especially of dissent). Among them are to create a terrible enemy (both within and without), intimidate those critical of policy, question patriotism of dissenters (equate criticism with treason), intensify surveillance of citizens, make the press subservient to the government's interests, and ignore the law when convenient. Using these and others, Wolf compared what she saw as abuses by the present Bush administration to the outrages in human rights violations committed by past dictators such as Hitler and Stalin. I have a problem with that: Bush will be out of office in January, 2009, no doubt to pursue a career of public speaking, legacy-forging, and wealth accumulation. But he will no longer be President. The dictators Wolf alluded to were there for the durations of their lives, and the degree of their oppression of their own people far, far surpassed anything going on here in America. So her emphasis on Bush as the focus of her criticism misses the point, at least to me. The real problem seems to be the laying in place of precedents that some future administration, perhaps ten to twenty years down the line, may possibly abuse for its own benefit by really suppressing the freedoms of Americans. And that could happen at the hands of a Republican, Democratic, or Independent administration.

When Wolf brought up the Andrew Meyer tasering fiasco that happened here in Gainesville a few weeks ago, she accused the local University Police of doing the work of Governor Jeb Bush in suppressing dissent. When the questioner corrected her by stating that Jeb Bush was no longer the governor of Florida, she became momentarily flustered and retreated, saying something to the effect that Bush's power was still there. This, to me, was very revealing, because it showed to me that Wolf's motivation in writing her book and promoting it was primarily to bash Bush and subscribe to a fringe belief that he is trying to take over the country (along with the shadowy people behind him). In this sense, she is not too far removed from the conspiratorialist mania that Alex Jones promotes.

The general points that Naomi Wolf brings up, regarding how citizens need to beware of steps that their government takes to remove their freedoms and rights, are legitimate and compelling. Having said that, I get the sense that she started her idea for the book from actions from the Bush administration that she objected to and then tied them to heinous totalitarian regimes, repeatedly placing the President on the same level as monsters like Hitler and Stalin. That I find unacceptable and intellectually dishonest. But I found Naomi Wolf to be interesting enough that I may just try to get a hold of that book of hers. If I do, you may see some more entries here regarding this topic.