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.

Rudy Giuliani doesn't understand what freedom is, as Bitter Laughter duly reports. For more information on freedom being slavery and ignorance being strength, please consult your local library. For more on America's Vice Principal, and the massive amounts of anti-gravitas he seems able to spontaneously generate, there's always this week's New Yorker profile.

When, on a campaign trip to Florida, he was asked whether he supported the controversial 2005 intervention in the Terri Schiavo case by the President and Congress (then controlled by Republicans), Giuliani couldn’t quite say. “I believe I did,” he responded. “I don’t, I—it’s a while ago and I think I said that I thought every effort should be made to keep her alive. I don’t know that I supported the whole thing to the very end, but I am not sure now.”

This Rudy Giuliani, with his new wealth, his new wife, and his new, natural haircut (replacing the familiar comb-over), seemed plainly unready for the mission he had undertaken. At the first Republican debate, held in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, in California, with Nancy Reagan in the audience, the ten Republican candidates were asked whether it would be “a good day for Americans” when Roe v. Wade was overturned. All the respondents answered that it would, except Giuliani, who said, “It would be O.K.” He said that it would “be O.K. also if a strict-constructionist judge viewed it as precedent.”

Clown is right.