“Drawing a line” and “defeating evil” makes fine political rhetoric (and work just as well as heroic one-liners and poster catchphrases), but those phrases are ultimately just as empty and one-dimensional as any good guy hero or totally evil villain. And somewhere in that shade of gray, between what you and I cannot agree on, and which no line could ever accurately divide, is something called compromise.

I disagree a bit with "24." The Jack Bauer character, as developed over the first two seasons of the show, was everything described in this article. The problem became, in my view, the show's writers' preoccupation with this politically correct "enemy within" garbage. By the last few seasons, this trend overshadowed Jack's character, and made the show trite, tedious and cliched. I was a big fan at first, then eventually gave up for largely this reason.