Liberty: Use It or Lose it.

Adapted from progressive political author Naomi Wolf's book THE END OF AMERICA: A LETTER OF WARNING TO A YOUNG PATRIOT, the provocative film THE END OF AMERICA is the documentary work of directors Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern.

Paralleling the Bush administration's post-9/11 measures to suppress perceived national security threats and political dissent, with disturbingly similar examples throughout modern history (Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Pinochet's Chile), the film mixes cautionary history with impassioned polemic.

Interweaving snippets of a lecture given by Wolf in New York with interviews as well as television and web clips, the film outlines the 10 ways Wolf posits by which a democracy can easily and swiftly descend into the clutches of fascism.

From sweeping legislations enacted to erode individual civil liberties such as the Patriot Act, to the systematic quashing of free speech and dissent, Wolf exposes the ways in which the culture of fear is perpetuated through state-sponsored media outlets and used to legitimize the suppression of freedom.

While END OF AMERICA is conspicuously one-sided in its criticism of the Bush Doctrine, it makes its broadest and most compelling arguments unimpeachable: no world leader should be above the rule of law, and governments should be held accountable when the rights of their citizens are threatened.