“I know this is a horrible thing to say,” former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani told a gathering of Republican business leaders and media flacks on February 18, “but I do not believe that the president loves America.”

When taken to task for the assertion, Giuliani doubled, then tripled, down.  First he bungled his response to claims of a racial angle (responding that since Obama was raised by a white mother, racism couldn’t possibly have anything to do with it). Then he segued into red-baiting: “Logically, think about his background … The ideas that are troubling me and are leading to this come from communists with whom he associated when he was 9 years old.”

Now, we know that even if Barack Obama doesn’t love America,  Rudy Giuliani definitely loves America. Why? Because he tells us so, of course. But which America does Rudy Giuliani love, and why?

On the evidence, he cares little for the America of Thomas Paine or Thomas Jefferson. He’s a veritable poster boy for the “love for big government” mindset often attributed to Obama (and to communism). To put it bluntly, Rudy Giuliani’s entire adult life has been spent 1) living off the taxpayer, 2) trying to live off the taxpayer, and 3) demanding that Americans give up their freedoms because they get in the way of  whatever Rudy Giuliani might happen to want.

“Freedom is about authority,” he said in a 1994 speech. “Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.” Ceding lawful authority to whom? Why, Rudy Giuliani, of course.

Upon graduation from law school, Giuliani clerked for a federal judge. From there, he joined the US Attorney’s office for the southern district of New York, then ran through a quick change of party affiliations (from Democrat to Independent to Republican) so he could collect government paychecks from the Ford and Reagan administrations.

Starting in 1989, Giuliani went to work for putatively “private” law firms while running for mayor of New York, finally winning election in 1993, shortly after the first terror attack on the World Trade Center.

Over the next eight years he so mismanaged New York’s preparations for another attack that on 9/11 (while Giuliani and his staff cowered in a command center he had inexplicably sited smack in the middle of the city’s most likely terror target, the WTC complex) first responders still lacked a unified radio frequency, resulting in the deaths of more than 100 cops and firefighters who went unwarned of the towers’ impending collapse.

He’s spent his post-mayoral career (when not running for office) representing corporate clients before government agencies, lobbying for Venezuela’s communist oil monopoly, and promoting himself as an “expert” on national security issues.

Yes, Rudy Giuliani loves America — the America whose taxpayers have given him lifelong money and power with a complete absence of anything resembling accountability. He and Obama are peas in a pod.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Rudy Giuliani Loves America. Here’s Why.” by Thomas L. Knapp, Muscatine, Iowa Journal, 02/25/15