Well that makes things nice and clear

[grysar]

Directly (I mean really directly) stolen from Sullivan.

"We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do,"

Rudy Giuliani, March 1994.

[Edit: Link extended to make clear that I'm linking to the speech and not some campaign site.]

Comments

[ninjadebugger.livejournal.com]

'Freedom is not about people being all they can be.'

LEGENDARY EPIC FAIL.

[chamelaeon.livejournal.com]

That is fucking sweet. Dated, but fucking sweet nonetheless. "Freedom's not freedom! It's subjugation."

War is Peace! Have a nice cup of Orwell.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

I know! I wouldn't have believed it was real without the NY Times link.

It's really amazingly transparent. He doesn't try to hide his meaning at all (aside from the using the word freedom).

[insheepsclothng.livejournal.com]

And you laugh at me when I use the word "fascist" to refer to public figures.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

I'll give this case.

[insheepsclothng.livejournal.com]

Fascist politians are not rare individuals, they're a structural problem. Why would someone go through all the rigamarole to gain authority via public office if s/he didn't plan to use the hell out of it? There's a systemic bias toward authoritarianism in representative democracy. Which is ideally balanced out by the populace voting out fascists, but we've seen how well that works.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't that be a structural problem of government in general? (Absent some sort of lottery system or the University club system of 'persuading' people to become officers when there's too many vacancies.

[insheepsclothng.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose a hereditary system gets rid of that bias but that's not really a good idea.

In theory, we have another remedy as well - a constitution and judiciary to keep fascists from running amok. In practice, not so much.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

And you still have the question of who inherits in a hereditary system. In practice it tends to be unclear.

I'd actually say the constitution and judiciary did alright. Bush had been dealt a fair number of set backs by the courts. The real problem was that Congress completely failed to be a check. Not that there's much that can be quickly done about it, but this has shown major weaknesses of a Presidential versus a Parliamentary system.

Obviously even now the Dems are having a hard time ending the war in Iraq, but they've quickly dug into Bush on a whole range of fronts. I stand by my guess that by the end of the month we're going to have a new Attorney General. Considering the new one will have to be confirmed, there's likely going to be quite an improvement. New Sec. Def Gates is leaps and better than Rumsfeld as he showed by actually firing people during the Walter Reed Scandal.

But yeah, the 2004 election showed definite structural weaknesses in the American system. This is why I don't think this particular quote will probably hurt Guiliani all that much in the primary.

[schneeble.livejournal.com]

This must be part of the self destruct you predicted. Came a lot sooner than I would have guessed.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

Heh, his authoritarian tendencies probably reinforce his gloryhogging, but as I mention to Reene, I sadly don't think this qualifies as a self-destruct.

Although I'll be you could make a really great You-Tube out of that one if the speech is videotaped somewhere.

[schneeble.livejournal.com]

To be fair, much of the remainder of Rudy's monologue had a slightly different thrust, according to the quotations here.

I'm not totally comforted by that information, but I do feel it's cause to be a smidgen less paranoid.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

The whole talk is actually available if you click on his name. (I should have extended the link to include that date. It looks like a link to a about Rudy page, not the talk itself.)

I do certainly concede that it's clear from the talk that he's not advocating for totalitarianism. But it's also not the only kinda creepy passage:

"The solutions are going to be found when we figure out as a society what our families are going to be like in the next century, and how maybe they are going to be different. They are going to have to be just as solid and just as strong in teaching every single youngster their responsibility for citizenship. We're going to find the answer when schools once again train citizens. Schools exist in America and have always existed to train responsible citizens of the United States of America."

I'd say the use of the word "train" and not "teach" or "educate" is probably telling. Now, to be clear, there is some social liberalism when he talks about what families will be like in the next century. He's definitely closer to Mass. Mitt Romney than national office Mitt Romney.

I'd also note that he's rather well known for always strongly backing the police when there's questionable shootings or beatings.