According to the Christian Science Monitor, the former mayor of New York City is losing ground in the Presidential race. Fine with me.
Giuliani’s main problem is that he is an authoritarian who believes the federal government should dabble in solving social problems. I might agree if I could find any evidence that the federal government has fixed a single social issue since its inception.
Let’s see – War on Drugs? Nope. Ongoing and I see no signs FedGov is winning. Drugs still widely used and readily available. U.S. has highest per capita rate of incarceration in industrial world. Forty years in, I wouldn’t call the War on Drugs a success story. I’d call it a colossal waste of money and human lives.
How about the War on Poverty? As far as I can tell, we’re making no progress there either. People may have more "stuff" in the United States than they have had at any previous time in our history, but there are still a whole lot of people living below the federal poverty line. I think that "war" just a game we play to keep taxes high, and employ more federal workers. I don’t really see large segments of the poor in America breaking out of their cycles of ignorance and apathy. Maybe if my stolen money was being used to create a culture where education was valued above ability to sink a basket I would feel differently. Forty years in I wouldn’t call the War on Poverty a success, I’d call it a colossal shift from independence towards ignorance.
Are we winning the War on Terror? Nah. It’s another made up unwinnable war. You cannot win a war on a word, especially when the word is becoming meaningless from overuse. Five years in, I’d call the War on Terror a giant boondoggle precipitated on a real threat that we’re doing a damn poor job of dealing with.
As President, Rudolph Giuliani would offer more of the same thing we’ve all grown accustomed to, the same stuff that got us where we are now – a powerful nanny state that makes all the important decisions on our behalf.
I fail to see how that benefits anyone but the bureaucrats in the long run. Nannyism certainly isn’t making America more free.