Consider 24 a left-wing show? No? Jonah Goldberg asks you to reconsider.
In the latest dead-tree version of National Review, Goldberg says “in a certain way 24 is a decidedly left-wing show.” No, he’s not talking about the torture and the “whatever-it-takes-to-win-the-war mentality.”
Here’s where Goldberg thinks 24 caters to a left-of-center sensibility:
[I]t is the myth of a super-competent, nimble, and savvy government that statists should really fina reassuring. It seems whenever Jack Bauer runs into a problem, he can call the relevant government bureaucrat and demand a solution in a manner of minutes, if not seconds. There’s no “You have reached the offices of the Counterterrorism Unit. None of our customer-service operatives are available right now. …” There’s no “Press 1 for English; press 2 for Spanish,” either. Need the video feed from the corner 7-11 patched into the facial-recognition software? No problem, just give me a second.
…
[I]t is a hallmark of the conservative critique of government that any agency, even the vaunted CTU, will never be efficient and competent enough. Simply depicting such omnicompetence is inimical to democracy and self-government, for the reason that it breeds the assumption that the State could solve all our problems if only we allowed it to.
