While argued outside of the courtroom, Justice Antonin Scalia’s comments at a legal conference in Ottowa, Canada will hereupon enter the legal lexicon as the “Jack Bauer defense.” Quoth the Crypt Keeper, in response to a Canadian judge’s perfectly sensible comment “Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra ‘What would Jack Bauer do?’”:
“Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. … He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent’s rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand. “Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?” Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. “Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don’t think so.” So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes.”
Is Scalia unable to differentiate between fantasy and real life? Was he ever? Unless he’s privy to sensitive information that we’re not, Jack Bauer, as portrayed by former Lost Boy Kiefer Sutherland, is not a sentient being in this plane of existence. Likewise, the world he inhabits is not ours, but a right-wing fantasy land from the mind of Joel Surnow, a friend of Rush Limbaugh. In Bauer’s world, world-shifting events always happen in 24-hour spans and no one ever has to go to the bathroom. It’s not real. Not. Real.
Conservatives are always pounding home the idea that moral relativism is the greatest danger to our culture. If pushed to its very extreme, it, like most ideas, will show cracks. But moral absolutism as espoused by the likes of Scalia and his ilk are a much greater threat to the American way of life. It justifies brutal torture in the name of the greater good. It bestows an almost divine power on leaders, then bends with his power. It does not admit errors – something is either right or wrong.
There’s a reason why Jack Bauer’s tactics don’t fly in the material world. Under torture, a person will say anything to end the agony. If conservatives want this world to be more like 24’s, they should come up with a healthy way to not have to use the restroom for days at a time.
