Freedom and Authority

Sullivan discovers that back in the day Guilliani said something like "Freedom is about authority" and "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 agree with Yglesias that this sounds kind of creepy, but apparently it goes back to Hegel, which Julian doesn't think is very comforting. I've never read Hegel, but it sounds bad to me as well.

I would just add I don't think authority or order precedes or establishes freedom, it's just that they provide the best conditions for freedom. To me, the simplest (and best) definition of freedom would seem to be the lack of outside coercion. In anarchic situations, or in say, present day Iraq, there may be little governmental interference, but there's still plenty of coercion, much of it much more fearsome, and more controlling than anything even repressive governments do. Government authority doesn't seem to me any intrinsically better than the control of a warlord or other source of power; it's just that a legitimate government is more likely to have sensible, consistent, and fairly applied rules.

Legitimate democratically elected government with powerful but limited authority gives us the optimal (and possibly widest) set of free choices.

What Rudy is saying would also probably be embraced by many authoritarians and even totalitarians (freedom is sticking to the party line), which does not give me great faith in his ideas about freedom or liberty. Authority allows freedom to flourish, but it seems crazy to say that's what freedom is 'about'.