No, not that “Law & Order” candidate — I’m talking about Rudy Giuliani, who famously (if dubiously) “cleaned up New York City.” Here’s a little ditty of his view on Freedom, from 1994, at a forum about urban crime.
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.
I get it now — Freedom is Slavery. It all makes sense now.