A crowd of a few dozen listened to a conversation between bestselling author Naomi Wolf and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges about Wolf’s most recent book, “Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries,” in the basement of Labyrinth Books on Wednesday evening.Wolf gained international attention after the publication of her first book, “The Beauty Myth,” in 1990, becoming a public face for the third-wave feminist movement.After describing the United States’ path to dictatorship and fascism in her sixth book, “The End of America,” Wolf wrote a sequel, “Give Me Liberty,” to re-examine the principles advocated by the founding fathers and to teach Americans how to best utilize the power endowed upon them by the democratic system. It chronicles the erosion of freedoms and liberties under the Bush administration.Wolf said that after readers finished “The End of America,” they asked her what to do next, so she wrote “Give Me Liberty,” which serves as a “proposed battle plan.”“Everything is kind of coming to a very clear implication that it’s time for a very focused, sustained and aware mass of citizens pushing [back],” she explained.When writing the book, Wolf said, she researched societies throughout history that had pushed back against oppression, including examples from France, Greece, Pakistan and the United States.She also investigated the views of freedom held by the founding fathers and the first Americans.“That founding generation … they were so radical, and they were so on fire with this vision of liberty [that] when [King] George III’s tax collectors did their things, the people would come and dismantle the tax collector’s mansion brick by brick until there was not one brick left standing,” she said.After researching historical documents from early America, Wolf said she realized that the state of American democracy and liberty had eroded since the time of the founding fathers.“We’ve actually been subject to a more general, systematic ... brainwashing effort to get us to accept a less and less vibrant definition of citizenship,” she said. “I learned that we have been encouraged by what I call ‘fake patriotism’ to accept what I call ‘fake democracy.’ ”Wolf noted that the founding fathers, as white slave owners who did not extend their high-minded ideals of liberty to all people, had their flaws. “But what they glimpsed was perfect,” she said.Through her research, Wolf said that she discovered several principles that people should call on in times of a democratic crisis: ordinary citizens should lead the country and cherish the rule of law, America should not have established religion, and people should deliberate with their neighbors without violence.At the end of “Give Me Liberty,” Wolf offers her readers 55 action steps that “teach you very powerfully how to take back the nation from the vested interests and criminal thugs [in politics],” she said. The steps include starting petitions and political movements, writing op-ed articles and protesting.Hedges weighs inAfter presenting the themes of her book, Wolf engaged in conversation with Hedges and then held a question-and-answer session with the audience.Hedges asked Wolf about the interaction between Native Americans and white settlers during the United States’ infancy.“Many political philosophers and historians [say] that because we are a nation that is also founded on a ruthless campaign of genocide ... there is a dark undercurrent of violence inherent in our society,” he said.Wolf responded that she is not an apologist for the domestic or foreign policies of the colonial era. “I’m asking us to look at the highest implications of it and separate it in a sense from the very messed up human beings who dealt with many tasks in front of them, atrociously,” she explained.Hedges, who said he will be voting for Ralph Nader in the upcoming presidential election, also noted the need to “step outside the two-party system.”He said that Democrats betrayed the working class through the North American Free Trade Agreement and welfare reform.“I think it’s misplaced to put our faith in the Democratic Party,” Hedges said of liberals.Wolf said that though she agreed with the need to reduce the power of the two-party system, she disagreed with Hedges’ decision to vote for Nader, noting that a presidential candidate has to appeal to at least half of the country.“The mandate of the left tends to be that if a candidate makes the left happy, it sets up a situation where that candidate can in no way set up a national presidential system,” she explained.Though the American political system can be disheartening, Wolf said, citizens can still make a difference.“Let’s create a revolution,” she said.Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux ’11, who attended the event, questioned the views of Wolf and Hedges.“I thought that Hedges and Wolf were both fairly naive about the ways that we go about changing the system,” she said in an e-mail. “I agreed with Wolf that what Hedges was saying was very disempowering, but I also thought that Hedges was right that often, working within the system doesn’t work.”
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