The Crossed Pond

Something that’s been bothering me about last night’s debate was when Rudy Giuliani waxed Lincoln. It sounded pretty good at the time–one of the few moments where he didn’t sound like a blathering idiot–but underneath the surface answer, which I appreciated, was something troubling.

Abraham Lincoln defined what an American is better than I’m going to be able to do it or Congressman Tancredo or anyone on the stage. Abraham Lincoln, who fought the know-nothing movement, said being an American is not whether you came over on the Mayflower or you came here yesterday. How much do you believe in freedom? How much do you believe in freedom of religion? How much do you believe in freedom for women? How much do you believe in the right to vote? How much do you believe in the rule of law?

The person who believes in that the most is the best American, and the person who doesn’t isn’t an American.

Now first of all, I appreciate the sentiment as applied to immigrants. It’s a good answer in the context of “What makes an American”? in reference to people who seek out our country; maybe the only answer.

As a Lincoln quote, my suspicion is it’s mostly fabricated. It sounds like something based on a kernel of something Lincoln might have said, but for the most part it’s just Rudy winging it. Nothing wrong with that per se, I often paraphrase ruthlessly when I’m half-remembering a sentiment I liked said by someone famous, though the Republican party has gotten in trouble before for wildly improvising heinous things under the guise of Lincoln. But, I’ve spent the morning idly trying to hunt down what Rudy’s interpretation might have been based on, and have been coming up with nothing close. Chalk it up to Lincoln idolotry, I guess. Again, nothing new.

What bothers me about it though is the appended bit at the end, which surely is Rudy’s own addition. It’s a brief but somewhat creepy window into Rudy’s soul, how he views the American experience.

If I did find the kernel, what i would guess it amounted to is “Americans are Americans are Americans”. You’re either American, or you’re not, and the qualifications aren’t hard to meet or even to be judged by others, but they’re there, they’re absolute, and they’re important.

Rudy, though, appears to judge American-ness on a sliding scale. You can be different degrees of American. There is such a thing, for instance, as a “best” American, and if you fall beyond some nebulous litmus test (how Rudy judges your committment to the defense of American freedom), you’re un-American…worse, actually, non-American. Just the beginning of that clause “the person who believes in that the most is the best American” begs another kind, the “worst” Americans, or the “sub-par” Americans. American-ness, then, is not a birthright, not an opting-in of a social contract, not a belief in principle per se, but a rated spectrum of committment. I don’t think he consciously intended it as such, but it’s also not hard to extend that notion of “best Americans” to Rudy’s view of wartime dissent (as in the case, not directly involving him, of the other misappropriation of a faux-Lincoln quote that I just linked). It’s not hard to see what Rudy’s getting at when he describes Ron Paul, for instance, or Harry Reid, as somehow having fallen outside the scope of “American”. Of how he just can’t fathom that he belongs to the same country as these people.

And what are the measures? Which freedoms do Rudy Giuliani consider central to American-ness? Rights of women, freedom of religion, freedom to vote…it’s pretty clear that Rudy’s conceptualization of freedom itself is based pretty much on contrast to Islamic theocracy. Rule of law is tacked on to the end there, though it’s tough to judge what Rudy considers that to even mean given his record and positions. But what Rudy considers central isn’t a constitutional or even natural law concept of freedom, it’s almost totally defined by the War on Terror, the places where Islamofascism and American Republicanism disagree.

No mention of where the line is more blurry. No mention of due process. No mention of criminal justice. No mention of privacy, property, economic rights, none of that. And it’s not because, I don’t think, Rudy just couldn’t fit them all in. It honestly just doesn’t seem to be how he conceptualizes of American freedom. 90% of the constitution is, to him, incidental. There’s a clear prioritizing, a clear core of American experience that Rudy recognizes, and the rest, everything that falls outside of that, remains outside his field of vision.

I don’t think I’m reading too much into this. Rudy’s painted a pretty clear picture, for those who are willing to look, of how he views the current struggle in America. But it was striking to me that, even when he’s giving throwaway rhetoric, he’s quietly but firmly framing the entire American experience in a pretty revolutionary, and troubling, way.