The Shape of Days

During a GOP conference call today, former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani was heard to say,

The idea that you can have an acceptable level of terrorism is frightening. How do you explain that to the people who are beheaded or the innocent people that are killed, that we’re going to tolerate a certain acceptable [level] of terrorism, and that acceptable level will exist and then we’ll stop thinking about it? This is an extraordinary statement. I think it is not a statement that in any way is ancillary. I think this is the core of John Kerry’s thinking. …

This is so totally different than what I think was the major advance that President Bush made – significant advance that he made in the Bush Doctrine on September 20, 2001, when he said we’re going to face up to terrorism and we’re going to do everything we can to defeat it, completely. There’s no reason why we have to tolerate global terrorism, just like there’s no reason to tolerate organized crime.

I wasn’t gonna make a big thing about Senator Kerry’s “terrorism is a nuisance” gaffe, for two reasons. First, everybody knows what he meant. His choice of words was unfortunate, but it’s disingenuous to pretend not to know what he meant. And second, the people who disagree with this world-view already know it. They don’t need to be told.

But deep down, I just love beautiful prose. And the way Rudy said it, with such economy of language and such clarity, just kinda gave me a warm feeling inside.

(No, not that kind of a warm feeling. I really like Rudy, just not in that way.)

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