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Many of us like to watch "Boston Legal." I taped last season finale and only recently got to watch it. In it, a judge comes to the firm because the citizens of Concord, Massachusetts, want to secede.
Here are the dramatic exchange:
Judge Harvey Cooper: This is not about the people of Concord hating America. Just the opposite. We are simply seeking to form our own Government. One that reflects the values of an America that used to be.
Alan Shore: Which values are those, sir?
Judge Harvey Cooper: Freedom of speech! Freedom of religion! Majority rule, for starters!
Alan Shore: You don't think America currently values those things?
Judge Harvey Cooper: Certainly much less so. Today, one does not even have the right to protest at a Presidential appearance! We have things called Free Speech Zones. News crews are not allowed to film the return of military caskets from Iraq lest the public get the awful idea that soldiers are being killed. This is censorship worthy of the Cold War Soviet Union, not the United States! Certainly not the America I love.
Alan Shore: Well, since we are in a time of war, maybe the rules…
Judge Harvey Cooper: Yes, and typically in war we observe the Geneva Convention. That's no longer the case. We torture. We lock people in prison camps like Guantanamo with no opportunity for a real hearing. We are guilty of the very oppression the colonists reared up against to begin America.
And it was arch-conservative Denny Crane who addressed him:
Denny Crane: You miss old America?
Judge Harvey Cooper: That's exactly right.
Denny Crane: Oh yeah. In old America we would never censor free speech?
Judge Harvey Cooper: No, we would not.
Denny Crane: Even though Woodrow Wilson jailed five thousand Americans for speaking out against
World War I?
Judge Harvey Cooper: That's one example. Would you like a lollipop?
Denny Crane: And locking people up without giving them a hearing like Guantanamo?
Judge Harvey Cooper: Many of them innocent people.
Denny Crane: FDR jailed a hundred thousand Japanese Americans. Almost all of them innocent. Many
of them children.
Judge Harvey Cooper: The Japanese internment camps were an isolated incident for which we remain
ashamed. One would hope we'd learn from it. Seems we haven't.
Denny Crane: Spying on our own citizens. That would never happen in the America you grew up in?
Judge Harvey Cooper: No.
Denny Crane: What about Nixon? He spied. Do I get a lollipop for Watergate?
Judge Harvey Cooper: Nixon did not represent the American…
Denny Crane: What about LBJ? He used the FBI to spy on reporters. Bill Clinton…
Judge Harvey Cooper: You're going to equate Bill Clinton with what goes on today?
Denny Crane: According to the ACLU, Bill Clinton expanded stealth surveillance far beyond any
previous administration ever! And that was during a time of peace!
Judge Harvey Cooper: Bill Clinton certainly never tortured people!
Denny Crane: No. He practiced rendition. Shipping suspects off to other countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. And they tortured for us. During the Cold War we did human experimentation on innocent people. College students. Mental patients. Government run experiments on unknowing victims. We tested everything from LSD to nerve gas. We exposed unwitting black men to syphilis trying to discover a cure. We used them as guinea pigs. No, Judge, you haven't named one thing America's doing today that we haven't been doing for a long, long time.
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