Andrew Sullivan on Rudy Giuliani’s invocation of New Hampshire’s state motto:

I love the motto too. But isn’t it exactly the opposite of what today’s GOP stands for? The entire premise of Giuliani’s positions is that, after 9/11, we should not live free in case we die. Last night, he spoke of two risible plots by total losers with no capability of doing serious damage as grave threats to America’s survival. The Fort Dix goons and the JFK plotters are among the most pathetic, puny enemies this country has ever known. But Giuliani speaks of them as if they were the approach of global catastrophe – and he demands that Americans surrender their most precious liberties in order to remain safe from them. Live free or die? Giuliani’s motto is: Live Under My Protection Or Die.

Or to be more precise, Live Under My Protection Or You Will Die.

But the point is clear.

Giuliani may pay lip service to the ideas of individual liberty, but, when push comes to shove, he doesn’t really believe in them. But, as Sullivan points out, that true of a large segment of the GOP these days:

The logic of today’s GOP in the war on terror, moreover, is the inverse of New Hampshire’s. In every choice of liberty versus security, the GOP now prefers security, without even publicly acknowledging the costs. And yet Mark Steyn sees no irony here. Do they really not see that their rhetoric on liberty is utterly hollow? Or have they just persuaded themselves that because they’re the ones taking our freedoms away, we have nothing to be concerned about?

I think the answer to the last question is yes. If the tables were reversed and a Democrat was in office who had proposed the PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretaps, and secret military tribunals, the GOP would be speaking of dictatorship. Heck, when Clinton was in office he wasn’t even doing half those things and the far-right had the idea that he and Janet Reno were on the verge ofÂ throwing out the Constitution and turning the country over to U.N. troops who would arrive on black helicopters.

Now that it’s one of their own in power, though, they don’t even seem to notice what’s gone wrong. And that is precisely the problem.