Samuel Johnson said it 240 years ago: “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Rudolph Giuliani proved it last week at a fundraiser in New York for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker when he exhumed commie-baiter Sen. Joe McCarthy by asserting that while he and Republican fatcats like himself were America-loving patriots, Pres. Obama and his family were not.

“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say,” Giuliani said, “but I do not believe that the president loves America. He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”

In the media frenzy that ensued, Giuliani — who spent $50 million campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 only to win just one (1) delegate to the Republican convention — embarked on a victory lap of right-wing media outlets during which he doubled down on his petty spitefulness.

That seemed to come to a halt yesterday when he issued a banal non-apology, which included this delicious tautology: “My bluntness overshadowed my message.” Bluntness was his message. After all, when you’re accusing the president of being anti-American, why be polite?

Of course, hardly anyone in the mainstream media questioned Giuliani’s standing to make such a blood libel against the president. After all, a large percentage of the reporters and pundits who covered the controversy live in New York and remember when, for reasons that remain mystifying to the rest of the United States, they anointed him “America’s Mayor” in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

The fact is, Giuliani has no standing to accuse Pres. Obama, or anyone, of being unpatriotic — or of being badly brought up, for that matter. When it comes to patriotism, Rudy is a quintessential chickenhawk — a warmongering draft dodger. In fact, he received more Vietnam-era Selective Service deferments — six — than even the bloodthirstiest chickenhawk, Dick Cheney, who sought and received a mere five deferments to avoid serving in Vietnam.

In fact, it’s hard to find a patriot in Giuliani’s family. His father, Harold Giuliani, avoided the draft in World War II by outing himself as a convicted felon. He’d served time under the name Joseph Starrett in Sing Sing for robbing a milkman in Harlem at gunpoint. Harold Giuliani was later employed as a thug working for Rudy’s mother’s brother, who ran a loan sharking business out of a bar in Brooklyn. That uncle and the uncle’s four brothers all managed to dodge the draft in World War II.

Pres. Obama was just 13 when the Vietnam War ended, but, in contrast with Giuliani’s family, Obama’s antecedents were bona fide patriots. His grandfather, Stanley Dunham, not only served in World War II, he was among the troops who invaded France on D-Day. The president’s great-uncle — his grandmother’s brother — Charlie Payne, served in the 89th Infantry Division, which liberated the concentration camps at Buchenwald. The president’s grandmother was a warworker who built B-29 fighter planes.

Giuliani has behaved like a scoundrel in his personal life, too. He married his childhood sweetheart, and second cousin, Regina Peruggi, and then cast her aside by having the marriage annulled on the grounds that they were cousins. Later, when he was mayor of New York, he failed to inform his second wife, Donna Hanover, an actress and news presenter, that he was leaving her for a younger woman, before announcing their separation at a press conference.

Finally — since Rudy chose to bring the president’s family into this squalid affair — it should be noted that, in 2010, Giuliani’s daughter Caroline, then 21, was arrested for shoplifting, which speaks to his own poor parenting. Everyone makes mistakes when they’re young, of course, and to Caroline’s credit, she reportedly voted for Pres. Obama in 2008.