"Freedom Is About Authority"

Radley Balko | August 15, 2007

Another fun speech from the 1990s surfaces, this one from Rudy Giuliani:

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's entire career, going back to his days as a U.S. attorney and Justice Department drug warrior, has been about accumulating more power for government, and fostering an authority fetish in the governed. Odd as a statement like "freedom is about ceding to authority" sounds, I don't doubt that Rudy actually believes it.