The End of America

Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot

By: Naomi Wolf

Narrated by: Karen White

The Founding Fathers believed that the proper goal of the State was to make men and women free to develop their faculties and to pursue virtue and wisdom. Our Constitution was built around these principles, protecting civil liberties and developing a careful system of checks and balances that protected our freedom from tyranny.

Naomi Wolf's latest work, The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, exposes how the escalation of executive power has eroded these core values and systems, limiting Congress's ability to make laws and our courts' power to interpret them - a scenario that our Founding Fathers foresaw and warned against.

Wolf outlines in this citizen call to action - which is reminiscent of Thomas Paine's revered Common Sense - the real threats to our civil liberties that exist and explains how by working together we can stop the growing threat.

The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot is the centerpiece to the American Freedom Agenda, a nonpartisan organization of which Naomi Wolf is a founding board member and which asks all Americans to support a "Freedom Pledge" to support only candidates who favor restoring the pillars of American liberty. It combines a wide host of partners, united in their belief that when it comes to the Constitution, we are neither conservative nor liberal; we are all Americans.

©2007 Naomi Wolf (P)2008 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Compellingly and cogently argued....Highly recommended." ( Library Journal)

A MUST read book!

While very important at the time of it's writing, it's even more important to read (or reread) now. The worrying actions of the early 2000s don't even shine a light on the current administration and its actions. Probably one of the most important books to read during the Trump regime.

Naomi Wolf was and is prescient

Dr. Wolf laid out the danger for us perfectly in 2007. it is uncanny how she saw what was happening and where these dangerous trends would lead. Read her book if you are concerned about the continuing erosion of freedom in the United States and beyond.

Perspective from 2007 spot on 17 years later.

If you read this book when it first came out, you should re-read it now. If you have not read yet, it should be a "must read" priority. Thought provoking and timely.

I wish everyone in Congress would read this

This is a well-thought-out, well-written book. After listening to it, I bought the print version.

The examples and analogies are well-chosen and not overwrought. Before reading the book, I'd often had discussions where I'd tried to make similar arguments. The problem is that most people seem to automatically cringe at any attempt to draw comparisons between prior fascistic governments and what's currently happening in the United States.

The reductio ad Hitlerum argument (term coined by Leo Strauss in 1950) is a "tactic...often used to derail arguments, [and] as such a comparison tends to distract and to result in angry and less reasoned responses." But, as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies (or Godwin's Law), which is sometimes confused with reductio ad Hitlerum, suggests, sometimes such comparisons are appropriate. Or, as George Santayana once said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

REMEMBERING, though, is not enough. There must be a RECOGNITION that what one remembers has application to the present. Otherwise, you won't know when the mistakes are being, or are about to be, repeated.

This book walks through the 10 steps -- and proposes that the model is predictive -- that democracies take on the path to becoming fascist states. This provides the tools for recognition. The arguments are both thought-provoking and compelling.

The narrator's voice is nice; almost TOO nice. She sounds almost seductive. Although I enjoyed listening to her, there were a couple of times I found her approach too relaxing: not conducive to attentive driving.

I wish I could afford to buy copies of this book to send to every United States Congressperson -- for STARTERS. I seriously considered purchasing a large number of copies to give away to some of my friends who take a laissez-faire approach the current U.S. government.

Maybe this book will help revive America before it's truly too late.

Interesting argument from someone I am politically in opposition to.

It was refreshing to hear from the opposing view without yelling or ad hominem abusives. Interesting especially because the author and I now share the same political leanings in 2024. It is important to understand the corruption on both sides of the aisle and the pawns that they have turned us into and the ways in which they continue to divide us.