The United States: A User's Manual

Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries - Naomi Wolf (Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2008)


Over the last few weeks, I've come to a realization about the value I place on gifts. As I work to overcome some of my hoarder instincts, I find I hit a much harder wall when it comes to items given to me by others.

This tangent has a point, which is that this book was one of those gifts. I've sadly moved on from my more politically-active 20s, and am not quite ready for a leadership role like the one this book encourages its readers to take. And I feel a little guilty about this fact on the best of days, and much guiltier while actually reading the book. So this wasn't the book I would have picked out for myself. But it came in a shiny bow, so read it I (eventually) would.

I struggle with what I view as the stridency of many political activists. I wish I didn't. It clearly brings me face to face with some of my own issues. But since this isn't a psychoanalytical session, let's set all that aside and just acknowledge that I faced this book with some amount of trepidation.

Big takeaways from the book:

• Democracy is not just a right, but a responsibility.
• We are complicit with the forces (career politicians, political parties, corporations) that want to keep us from remembering and exercising these rights and responsibilities.
• This sucks.
• But there is a lot that we can do, and a lot that people are doing. The Constitution was designed to get and keep us involved.
• And lots of "how to" stuff, most of which made me feel a little bit exhausted.

And the broader takeaway? I guess that would involve deciding what I'm going to do with this information. I was fairly involved in politics (on a local level) in the last decade, and it burned me out pretty badly. I retreated back to a form of civic engagement that made me comfortable. I worked in civic education, and tried to help encourage an engaged and passionate group of young Americans. And then I left that job, and I'm still in a bit of limbo, waiting to find that hook that will get me back in action. It's given me some time to think, and to play with some of my knee-jerk political reactions, to wonder where I believe something because it is "blue" or deny something because it's "red." And while perhaps the lesson of this book is that you shouldn't be waiting, it's what I intend to do.