I wonder if we can get richardson to respond? Too bad I'm out of "activist" time for the week and he doesn't seem to read blogs.

An Enlightened Despot

Even though, according to Ontheissues.org political score, Giuliani's score of 60/60, puts him just behind Ron Paul as the most libertarian of all national politicians in the congress,senate, and the presidential candidates.

The one flaw in the scoring system, however, is that issues aren't weighted. It's one thing for a politician to be more or less conservative on taxes and spending and relatively liberal on social issues such as abortion and gay rights, but do we really want an intellectual heir of Hobbes coming into the office on the heels of Bush's Unitary Executive and institutionalization of perpetual war?

Of course, it may be that Giuliani should be given some slack, in that the quote is from 12 years ago, in a different political time than our era of Patriot Acts, DHS, warrantless wiretaps, National Security Letters, and so on. Perhaps he will disavow that quote or at least clarify just exactly the scope of "Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do" Does it merely point out you, for example, can't have people driving on the left side of the road at their discretion, or does it, more ominously, signal agreement with Gonzales' interpretation of habeas corpus and Bush's relative dismissal of 4th amendment rights in "fighting a War on Terror."

Interestingly, I saw this quote discussed on a generally pro-Bush/GOP forum and they were more or less in agreement with it. Of course, what would have been their reaction if it were instead attributed to Hillary Clinton? They would have been manning the hatches, intepreting it as code speak for taking away their gun rights.

Does anyone remember the online game NationStates that was a major meme for a while? In the game, mostly a series of questions that determined what your country's politics would be, there were three major political categories: economic, social, and political. Rudy Giuliani may seem like a candidate who supports a fair amount of economic and social freedoms (social issues primarily sexual, not freedom of expression), but he's an authoritarian on political issues (including the issue of free speech). And, for me, that's still a very scary possibility.