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The Burden of Bad Memes
PATRIOTs and Chicken Littles
Julian Sanchez

It's official: The fashionable fall meme for unreconstructed Bush administration cheerleaders is the notion that civil-libertarian concerns about the PATRIOT Act have been much ado about nothing: the squawking of so many Chicken Littles.

The defense of PATRIOT has been slow in coming, in part because it was possible, at first, to dismiss criticism as predictable carping from the usual suspects: the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and other notorious "fifth columnists," to borrow the new right's sledgehammer-subtle imprecation du jour. Things became trickier once American Baptist Churches, the American Conservative Union, Gun Owners of America, and folks like Georgia ex-representative Bob Barr began voicing reservations. The conservative base has begun to get nervous....