Rudy On America

Back in Philly after a week on the road and a long redeye home from San Francisco, and while my gas tank is relatively empty, Wife and I settled in for an evening of homemade pizza, beer, and the Utah / Texas A&M game (go Utes)

My airborne reading of the moment is Rudy Giuliani’s Leadership. It’s an obligatory read, really, as most of my professional counterparties eagerly swept the book from the shelves upon its release. It's not spectacular, but there's much in the book to keep your interest, especially Rudy’s candor regarding his extramarital relationship and his experiences on 9/11. The paragraphs that close the preface struck me in particular, and I thought they might strike you as well:

Abraham Lincoln used to say that the test of one’s Americanism was not one’s family tree; the test was how much one believed in America. Because we’re like a religion, really. A secular religion. We believe in ideas and ideals. We’re not one race, we’re many; we’re not one ethnic group, we’re everyone; we don’t speak only one language, we’re all of these people. We’re tied together by our belief in political democracy, in religious freedom, in capitalism, a free economy where people make their own choices about the spending of their money. We’re tied together because we respect human life, and because we respect the rule of law.

Those are the ideas that make us Americans. And those are the ideas that I leaned on when it was time to lead, both after September 11 and long before.

Indeed. Also worth noting: Rudy’s not the only Rudi I like …