Naomi Wolf on Liberty and the Founding Fathers | Big Think

Naomi Wolf on Liberty and the Founding Fathers

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We need to remember that it is our duty to rebel against our government, Naomi Wolf says.

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Naomi Wolf:

Naomi Wolf is an author and essayist whose works have appeared in The New Republic, Wall Street Journal, Glamour, Ms., Esquire, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. She also speaks widely to groups across the country.

Her first book, The Beauty Myth, was an international bestseller. She followed it with Fire With Fire: The New Female Power and How It Will Change The 21st Century; Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood; Misconceptions, critique of pregnancy and birth in America; The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot; and Give me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries.

Wolf is also co-founder of the Board of The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, an organization devoted to training young women in ethical leadership for the 21st century. She is a graduate of Yale University and completed her graduate work at New College, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Wolf: So, waking up is one task, remembering that the founding generation which is why I went back to from my book “Give Me Liberty” to recall from them what core values we’re supposed to have and what we’re supposed to believe in order to fight the [subversions] of Liberty that we’re facing because I feel like we’ve been encouraged to forget those values with what I call fake patriotism leading us to accept the fake democracy in many ways. But the founding generation would have wanted us to take on board an inner conviction that it is our right to ask these questions and to not be passive and, you know, accept this kind of fake patriotism that our role is to just support the government no matter what it does or support any military intervention no matter what. That is not what the founding generation, I mean, ordinary people not just the well-known founders, you know, farmers and [washer] women and artisans and the slave African-Americans they were captivated by this vision of liberty and they intended us to have this kind of inner courage to challenge the government. That’s what the Declaration of Independence says, the second paragraph is, “Challenge the government anytime it tries to be tyrannical or oppressive. It is your duty to rebel.” The third thing we can do is lobby our Attorneys General and our district attorneys to prosecute those in the [George W.] Bush administration who have committed high crimes and misdemeanors. So, this is partly strategic. I was on the phone this morning with Charlotte Dennett, who is running for Attorney General in Vermont, and she has promised that if she’s elected she will prosecute George [W.] Bush for murder and there are many other organizations from Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch to the American Freedom Campaign who are in discussion right now with attorneys about possible prosecutions of Bush and senior officials, and this is not rhetorical. There is evidence that they’ve committed multiple crimes whether it’s violating the law locally and international, domestic and international on torture or whether it’s advancing the legal war in Iraq or whether it’s wiretapping illegally without, you know, violating the Fourth Amendment without warrants. I, personally, am investigating whether the deployment of troops and the militarization with [homeland] security money of local police departments that you saw in the brutality in St. Paul, right, during the Republican National Convention. I’m investigating right now with lawyers whether that constitutes treason, and I think if it does, he shall, should be prosecuted for treason. Here’s why, the Constitution defines treason as making war against United States and I think it’s very arguable that deploying troops against the people of United States and certainly militarizing their local police forces with more, more lethal technologies in order to subdue and subjugate citizens and stripping off their First Amendment rights is making war against United States, but I’m not a lawyer so, I’ll get back to you on that. But definitely what we can do is lobby our Attorneys General and district attorneys to prepare prosecutions and move forward with indictments and arrest and trials. What is this to you?