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Freedom Book of the Month, Special December Feature: The Freedom Book of the Year
Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998
by Vin Suprynowicz
Mountain Media, 1999, 506 pp.
Looking back from the middle of the next century, we may view the 90's as a decade of escalation not unlike the years between Grenville's Stamp Act of 1765 and the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
In doing so, I think we will place Vin Suprynowicz's "Send in the Waco Killers" in context: It is nothing less than Tom Paine's "Common Sense," updated and made applicable to our current situation.
I've loaned this book to more than one non-libertarian friend, and its persuasive power is unparalleled in my experience. Even in a decade where we've seen a marked increase in the popularity of key libertarian policy recommendations -- ending the war on drugs, repealing the income tax, sacking the failed Social Security program -- it's difficult to sell the philosophical underpinnings of our ideology to the masses. "Send in the Waco Killers," like Paine's masterwork, is proving an effective tool, and for the same reasons.
It's not enough to make a theoretical case for our ideas. If throwing out a well-phrased idea were enough to guarantee its acceptance, we'd be living in a libertarian society today. Blue collar workers would be arguing Rand versus Rothbard over their coffee breaks, and the Supreme Court would cite the equations in Nozick's "Anarchy, State and Utopia" in its majority opinions. Theory has its place, but it doesn't get the blood of the masses pumping.
On the other hand, let's look at the first lines of "Common Sense:"
"Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
"As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of calling the right of it in question (and in matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry) ..."
Suprynowicz could have plagiarized these lines for the front of "Send in the Waco Killers."
"Send in the Waco Killers" is a powerful book -- not because it offers prescriptions, although it does (as did "Common Sense") -- but because it sets down, between two covers, the full horror of our government's actions in the here and now. It makes them personal, it demonstrates that none of us are immune, and it stirs the heart to say "no more."
Friends of mine who can't be moved to discuss the moral foundation of the war on drugs, the historical importance of trial by jury, or the practicality of the Food and Drug Administration can empathize with the small businessman jailed because a product he makes might be of use to drug dealers, or the juror slapped with a contempt charge for not following a judge's instructions to convict regardless of her beliefs, or the publisher driven into bankruptcy because the FDA took issue with a book's use of a non-approved sweetener in its recipes. And that makes the difference.
In a year filled with important and ground-breaking libertarian book releases, I give you "Send in the Waco Killers," by Vin Suprynowicz. It is what other books aspire to be, and for me, it is the hands-down winner of our "Freedom Book of the Year" award.
Additional Links:
edited by Thomas L. Knapp
June 2000: Law's Order by David Friedman
May 2000: Forge of the Elders by L. Neil Smith
April 2000: Reciprocia by Richard G. Rieben
March 2000: The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers by Ayn Rand
February 2000: Addiction is a Choice by Jeffrey A. Schaler
January 2000: Revolutionary Language by David C. Calderwood
Special December 1999 Feature: The Freedom Book of the Year: Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998 by Vin Suprynowicz
November 1999: Conquests and Cultures by Thomas Sowell
October 1999: A Way To Be Free by Robert LeFevre, edited by Wendy McElroy
September 1999: Assassins (Left Behind) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
August 1999: Don't Shoot the Bastards (Yet): 101 More Ways to Salvage Freedom by Claire Wolfe
July 1999: The Mitzvah by L. Neil Smith and Aaron Zelman
June 1999: The Incredible Bread Machine by R.W. Grant
May 1999: Send in the Waco Killers by Vin Suprynowicz
April 1999: It Still Begins with Ayn Rand by Jerome Tuccille
March 1999: The Dictionary of Free-Market Economics by Fred Foldvary
February 1999: Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand edited by Mimi Reisel Gladstein and Chris Matthew Sciabarra
In December 2004 this page was modified significantly from its original form for archiving purposes.
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