When Erik Resly '08 heard that Rudy Giuliani was speaking at a retirement community church near his Fort Myers, Fla., home, he was excited at the prospect of spending his afternoon listening to the Republican presidential candidate. But he never expected to get booed by more than 1,000 people during the Jan. 14 speech.
After speaking, Giuliani, who has been campaigning heavily in Florida, opened the floor to questions. Resly said that when he got his turn with the microphone, he stated that he believed that Giuliani, when speaking with targeted voters, tends to oversimplify his explanation of why Islamic terrorists are anti-American. Resly said he then began to ask Giuliani to clarify and defend his stance.
But Resly never got to ask everything he wanted because he said the crowd of about 1,000, most of whom appeared to be seniors, began booing him.
Resly said that one woman behind him shouted, "See what the universities are teaching our students these days?" The man who was holding the microphone for Resly began to take the microphone, Resly said, but he grabbed at it and shouted, "You're taking away my democratic right!"
The former New York mayor seemed to agree, saying the international relations concentrator had "an absolute right" to finish the question, which Giuliani did answer.
Though he was disappointed by the booing, Resly said he appreciated Giuliani's initial willingness to call on him to ask a question as well as his later willingness to "stand up" for Resly's right to speak.
"I know candidates are typically less inclined to call on the younger generation because we tend to be more hard-line," Resly said. "Not every presidential candidate would be willing to face hard questions."
Still, Resly, who said he is "not the biggest Giuliani fan," said he was struck by the "hypocrisy of the entire situation." After having been discouraged from speaking, Resly felt that those present later claimed that "freedom of speech was precisely what made this country great" in appraising Giuliani's response to the situation. Resly felt that in some ways the booing crowd had been "renouncing their own rights as Americans."
Resly's question centered around whether Giuliani supported the Clash of Civilizations theory, which was developed by Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington. The theory states that culture and religion are the main sources of conflict among civilizations.
Resly said Giuliani, whose campaign did not return repeated calls, answered by saying that he did not support the theory because he felt the terrorist movement did not represent a civilization. But according to a video on the Web site of the News-Press, a southwest Florida newspaper, Giuliani said, "The clash is between a distortion by a few people of a religion and our world, which stands against the precepts of the way in which they've distorted that religion."
Resly said he felt Giuliani's response perpetuated his tendency to oversimplify and attribute terrorists' anti-American sentiments to cultural differences. Resly said that the former mayor tends to say that Islamic terrorists "hate us because of what we stand for - liberty."
"I wasn't saying he's wrong, necessarily," Resly said. "There's never one answer. I'm only 22 years old, but I'm wise enough to know that there's never one answer that satisfactorily explains such complex issues."
