"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."

Found on Kos.

What a nutbag!

Does anyone else seriously wonder about this?

Very authoritarian. The quote is from March 20, 1994 when he was mayor of NYC. You can read excerpts in the NYT

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E2D9173CF933A15750C0A96295826 0

Very interesting spin here. Thanks for digging that up.

Some of the excerpts are not bad!

eg:

"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."

This is a strong statement toward a greater emphasis on social norms, personal responsibility, and I'm not sure if he meant it that way, but shared responsibility too.

(and we fall very short on a lot of these right now, IMHO)

And this:

We talk about teaching ethics in schools -- people say, "What ethics? Whose ethics? Maybe we can't." And they confuse that with teaching of religion.

The idea of people asking, "whose ethics?" is very troublesome to me. There are only ethics! (which is the study of these things)

Engaging young people in these kinds of discussions gives them some mental tools through which they can weigh their value judgments, beliefs, etc... Honestly, without them, or having them presented in distorted form, is in and of itself really not all that ethical, given the stakes, their rights and responsibilities.

There is self interest too. At some point we all will be living under them. That could get ugly, if poorly done.

Anyway... that whole mess aside, there is this bit I strongly agree with:

"We're going to find the answer when schools once again train citizens."

Absolutely!

And this takes parents, working with their kids --and most importantly, other parents, to set solid social norms to work.

Makes me think of the gay vet thread again. It bothers me, because ones military contribution is different than who one is.

Maybe the confusion over ethics, religion, morality and the law is doing us some serious harm. I know truth and conviction are co-mingled way more than they should be. (and that's not any jab at faith, just a problem in general critical reasoning wise. Pops up in a lot of places!)

So, if the solder was doing what was required, and was ethical in those things he could control, why shouldn't he be honored? I don't mean to drag that up again, but instead want to post up an example of just one simple social norm:

We honor our veterans, period.

Why can't we do that? There really shouldn't be a parent, teacher, coach, etc... not setting that social norm by example.

That's it, I suppose. I'm in the middle of a *long* poker tournament and had some time to think on this.

Spin indeed! --almost unethical spin --leverage of what Giuliani was trying to get at. He has mingled some things together --spinning himself, but some good stuff is in there.

I believe rational discussion would tease it out --and that's the rub for me.

As people, having that discussion really should trump the other things. Call it personal responsibility. If we do too much that's self serving, we reap what we sow, right?