101 THINGS TO DO 'TIL THE REVOLUTION, a book Review by Vin Suprynowicz (vin@lvrj.com) or (vin@intermind.

net) About once a year, a book crosses my desk that gets me up on my feet pacing, cornering my long-suffering cohorts so I can read them passages aloud. When their response is to try to pilfer the thing off my desk until I have to stand guard with a metal pica-pole, whacking their hands and informing them this is not the local lending library, I know I'm onto something. It happened about a year ago with John Ross' novel of the gun culture, "Unintended Consequences" (from little Accurate Press in St. Louis.) Previous to that was Peter Duesberg's "Inventing the AIDS Virus" (Regnery) and L. Neil Smith's inspiring novel of handguns in outer space, "Pallas" (hardcover from Tor, or paperback from Laissez-Faire books, 1-800-326-0996.) This year, Christmas came just a few days late, as I opened my mail on Jan. 3 to discover an unobtrusive little 191-page trade paperback by Claire Wolfe. Put off by the parody ladies-magazine title, I prepared to read a few passages and consign the thing to the "someday" heap. Instead, I found myself messaging bookseller friends from San Francisco to Providence: "Recommend you make prompt inquiries RE stocking Claire Wolfe's new paperback, '101 Things To Do 'Til The Revolution'." Of late, I can pretty well predict my e-mail will contain several messages a week from earnest souls who plead: "Have just discovered your columns. Always thought of myself as a conservative or Republican, but I find I agree with almost everything you say. The government is out of control and our remaining freedoms and being sold down the river. But no matter how many politicians promise to roll back taxes and repeal bad laws, we just get more of the same, and then I'm told 'You can't complain, you voted for them.' "Help! I'm not ready yet to start shooting bureaucrats at random. There are too many of them; they'll just use it as an excuse to clamp down even harder; and who'll take care of my family when I'm gone? What can I do?" In the past, I've tried to answer these earnest pleas by talking about the importance of becoming a fully-informed juror, since jury duty (providing we honor our consciences and the Ninth Amendment, in the face of any "instructions" to the contrary from the black-robed prosecutor behind the bench) allows us to stand as a last line of defense for our fellow citizens against the intrusions of an out-ofcontrol government. I've struggled to explain the importance of exercising our Second Amendment rights, of acquiring and learning the safe use of militiastyle arms and standing up for those who are persecuted for insisting that only an armed people can ever be free. And I've talked of the insidiousness of the mandatory government youth propaganda camps. Imagine my relief at now being able to say "There happens to be a new book that answers this very question, available for just $20.90 postpaid from Loompanics in Port Townsend, Washington. Twenty percent discounts for five to nine copies, 40 percent off for 10 to 49, dial 1-800-380-2230 ..."

In her introduction to "101 Things To Do 'Til The Revolution," Claire Wolfe writes: "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards. On the road to tyranny, we've gone so far that polite political action is about as useless as a miniskirt in a convent. ... "Something's eventually going to happen. Government will bloat until it chokes us to death, or one more tyrannical power grab will turn out to be one too many. ... Maybe it'll be one more round of 'reasonable gun control' or one more episode of burning children to death to save them from 'child abuse.' [i.e Waco] Whatever. Something will snap ... "Until then, what do you do if you ... don't want to be a Good Little Citizen begging an unhearing congresscritter to give back the rights he and his buddies swiped from you? ('Dear Congressman Baron: You're such a busy and important person, I'm sure this little matter has just slipped your mind temporarily. But 90 percent of the federal government is unconstitutional. ... I'm sure you'll want to abolish all the unauthorized agencies and programs right away. Please don't forget to repeal all the illegal laws and get rid of the taxes while you're at it' ..." Ms. Wolfe's "101" answers are useful, and thoroughly entertaining. From shifting your meager assets to where that junkie with the million-dollar-a-minute habit, Uncle Sam, can't lay hands on them, to preserving and storing enough food and water to last you through any extended shutdown of the government and commercial services, to the proper way to bury your guns should blanket confiscation loom (as in Australia right now), this common-sense guide never loses its sense of humor and perspective. It's blissfully free of the delusion that the system can still be reformed, but also of those tedious ramblings about U.N. conspiracies and biblical prophesy that clog so much of what passes for "survivalist" literature these days. If you're just starting to realize the "police" gang is unlikely to protect you in times of real disorder -- that you'd better break down and buy some firearms to protect your home and loved ones -- where do you start? "101 things" has the specific, well-thought-out answers. Handguns? Sexists may have to re-examine their prejudices as this "middle-aged lady" warns her readers to go no smaller than .40 Smith & Wesson or .357 magnum: "Nothing smaller, please! Don't go out and get a .25 or a .32 because you're inexperienced, have small hands or are afraid of big guns. Instead, get some experience, overcome your fears, or find a large caliber gun with a grip that fits smaller hands. A gun that is too underpowered may not have the stopping power to save your life in an emergency." Where on earth did this serendipitous little volume come from? "I'd been active in the Libertarian movement for ages," Ms. Wolfe

explained by telephone, as I took her away from a warm supper at home in the boondocks of the Pacific Northwest. "Before the 1994 election I was really excited, I worked on the campaign of a Republican, Linda Smith, who ran for Congress in the 3rd District in Washington State. I grilled her, I had dinner with her, I backed her up against the wall at a cocktail party and wouldn't let anyone else talk to her; I asked her all the questions, and she gave every right answer. "I worked for her, she won, and within six months she voted for House Bill 666, which would have gutted the Fourth Amendment, would have allowed evidence to be used that was the product of illegal searches. She voted for that and then she didn't even answer my letter asking why. "So over the course of '95 I just became angrier and more furious. I was offered the chance to write a manual of political action for the gun rights people, based on the Handgun Control manual that someone had gotten hold of, so I worked on that. But I thought, 'I'm telling people lies, I'm telling them how to work within the system, and it's all useless. It just doesn't work.' "I was just to the bursting point with hate and frustration, I thought I was going to go postal. But one day the name of this book just hit me, the name and the first line, and I started laughing, I thought it was funny. So I sat down, wrote about a third of the book in a week, sent the proposal off to Loompanics, and they bought it. ... "All I wanted was to write it; I didn't know if anyone would read it. So now it's so strange to have people tracking me down over the Internet, asking 'Are you the one who wrote, "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards"...'? Especially because so many of them say 'Well, that's what I think, too.' ... "When I was working on the book, of course I thought I was being very radical, but then after it came back from the publisher I said to myself, half the message of this book is 'Take responsibility for yourself; be responsible.' And that's a very 19th-century message, a very old-fashioned message. But people who do that are the worst enemies of the state, or at least the people the state can least control ... "It's an angry but an uninhibited book, it's a middle-aged lady sitting down, sick to death of her respectability" (Ms. Wolfe makes her living writing corporate newsletters and advertising copy, mostly under a pseudonym) "and saying 'Screw that, we can't win within the system, so screw that.' "That's part of the reason for the title. 'One-hundred-and-one things' is always attached to '101 ways to fold napkins,' so I wanted to take that concept and apply it to a very different kind of problem. ... "I'm sorry that I circumvented the question of when to shoot; I don't know when it will come that time. I just think we will know when it is time." Till then, "101 Things to Do 'Til The Revolution" is available from Loompanics Unlimited, P.O. Box 1197, Port Townsend, Wash. 98368, at $20.90 postpaid, volume discounts available. Buy several. You have friends.

Vin Suprynowicz vin@lvrj.com, (OR:) vin@intermind.net ======================================================== Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin@lvrj.com, or vin@intermind.net. The web site for the Suprynowicz column is at http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/. The column is syndicated in the United States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas Nev. 89127. =========================================================== Note from Claire Wolfe to Vin: In answer to posting on the Search for Liberty List Serve: Doc, thank you and bless you! To all on this list who read Doc's "off-point" message, I'll speak up in Doc's defense and say, "No it isn't! Item #43 in the book Vin reviewed is about moving to a freer place." So the message on-topic, after all. Doc and Ed from this list were instrumental in bringing me to Search for Liberty, and have helped make a quote from the book "famous" (or infamous, as the case may be). What you don't know yet is that Vin would never have written the review below if you guys hadn't gotten the ball rolling on the quote. I hope the book makes a difference. I know you folks have made a big difference to me. If there is ever a Volume II of the book, it will no doubt have more items about the search for freer places, thanks to the people here. Claire claire.wolfe.freedom@worldnet.att.net