Rudy Giuliani should seek a political career in Germany; his below pronouncement encapsulates the German notion of "freedom" - where, of course, "lawful authority" means: elected to mould the law in any way that suits the authority.
“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 and how you do it.”Which reminds me of discussions with Germans that had served as soldiers in the Second World War. I kept being told that they had acted under oath, i.e. under the provisions stipulated by "lawful authority". It never occurred to them that they had effectively been forced to take that oath, for if you refused to take it, you would go to prison or be shot - depending on how close the "lawful authority" had moved toward collapse during the course of the war.
-Rudy Giuliani
From a 1994 Speech
The striking thing is that none of the interlocutors ever questioned the substantive lawfulness of the oath and the requirement to take it.
This is legal positivism for you. Whoever is in power is a lawful authority. Whoever holds power is the legitimate lawmaker. People in Germany still cannot figure out how things could be any other way.
Germans do not think much about the law, they are too obsessed with obeying it.
For more, see my post:
June: "[1] Fundamental Issues - The Rule of Law and the Economy"
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