Enough Already

There has been a trend among television writers lately that has really started to annoy me. Every now and then a show will have some character make some crack about the Patriot Act. Last week on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, someone mentioned the Patriot Act, and another character retorted that he liked it better the first time he read it, when it was called 1984. I've heard similar statements on Alias, Without a Trace, The Practice, Boston Legal, and others I'm sure. A few of them were hyperbolical wisecracks like Det. Logan's above. But most were basically sincere. Now I'm about as liberal as they come. I hate George W. Bush and voted for Kucinich in the primaries. But come on. The Patriot Act is not that bad. It doesn't erase the Constitution. It doesn't turn America into a police state. Most of it is actually good, useful law. There are bad parts, but in my mind what makes them bad aren't the powers they give to the executive, which by and large seem reasonable, it's the fact that it gives the executive broad new powers without any checks. It's bad, but nowhere near as bad as TV writers seem to believe. The problem, I think, is that all the egregious constitutional overreach of the past four years--the rounding up of Muslim immigrants, the holding of "enemy combatants", the torture memos, etc.--have been all wrapped up in the liberal mind as being one and the same with the Patriot Act. They use the Patriot Act as a convenient short hand. But if it were repealed in its entirety tomorrow, most of the worst stains on our constitutional democracy would remain. So move on, TV writers, and find a new and more accurate bugaboo for you concerns about creeping fascism.