| abstract
| - Clear and present danger was a term used by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in the unanimous opinion in the case Schenck v. United States, concerning the ability of the government to regulate speech against the draft during World War I: Following Schenck v. United States, "clear and present danger" became both a public metaphor for First Amendment speech and a standard test in cases before the U.S. Supreme Court where a U.S. law sought to limit a citizen's First Amendment rights; the law would be deemed constitutional if it could be shown that the language it prohibited posed a "clear and present danger." However, the "clear and present danger" criterion in Schenck was replaced in 1969 by Brandenburg v. Ohio, and the test refined to determining whether the speech would provoke an "imminent lawless action."
- Clear and Present Danger is a novel by Tom Clancy, written in 1989, and is a canonical part of the Ryanverse. In the novel, Jack Ryan is thrown into the position of CIA Acting Deputy Director of Intelligence and discovers that he is being kept in the dark by his colleagues who are conducting a covert war against the Medellín Cartel based in Colombia. The title of the book is based on the legal phrase "clear and present danger".
- Jack Ryan must investigate the murder of a life-long friend of the POTUS in relation to what appears to be a drug cartel in Columbia, only to be pulled into a war illegally started by the US government. Written by Tom Clancy with film adaptation starring Harrison Ford.
* Action Duo
* Action Survivor
* Armchair Military: When the operation starts to unravel and people not cleared start to figure it out, one person states rather bluntly that if the CIA had actually bothered to include the organizations they were suborning, the operation would have run smoother, would not have been discovered, and would've been a hell of a lot more deniable, basically a screed against the Armchair Military that set up the operation in the first place.
* Badass: John Clark
* Calling the Old Man Out: "How dare you, sir!"
* Coast Guard: USCGC Panache, a definite Cool Boat, plays a very prominent role in the book. In the film it's an unnamed Coast Guard cutter.
* Deceased Fall Guy Gambit: In the movie, the President threatens to do this to Admiral Greer. In the book, John Clark does this successfully to Admiral Cutter.
* Don't Sneak Up On Me Like That: This exact line is said by Clark when the pilot Larson walks up behind him without warning first. Actually incredibly stupid of Larson, since Clark just killed four heavily armed mercenaries.
* Drugs Are Bad
* Even Evil Has Standards - Cortez has the mindset of a professional intelligence officer, so while he mostly has a lot of Pragmatic Villainy moments, he does show genuine disgust with the methods used by the Cartel to intimidate their rivals (even paraphrasing Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil at one point in the book).
* Every Helicopter Is a Huey: Justified in the film by Rule of Symbolism.
* Everything Is Online: Mocked. After Cortez and Ryan both start to suspect that a car bombing was actually caused by a missile, they research the issue. Ryan, the Deputy Director of the largest intelligence organization in the world, has to pull an all-nighter alone looking through Jane's Armaments. Cortez just searches a slick, high-tech database.
* Inverted in the original novel, where the cardboard cover of the book is how Cortez figures out how the bomb didn't leave any traces.
* False-Flag Operation
* Friendly Sniper: "Ding" Chavez, who becomes a major recurring character.
* Only in the movie. In the book, he's a reconnaissance specialist.
* "Get Out of Jail Free" Card: Which is interpreted differently in each version. In the movie, it exists to protect Ritter from the consequences of his actions. In the book, it's to protect the CIA as a whole.
* Gilligan Cut: Jack Ryan knocking on the cartel boss's door.
* Hauled Before a Senate Subcommittee
* Hollywood Hacking: Averted.
* Incurable Cough of Death: Admiral Greer, we hardly knew ye.
* Ironic Echo Cut: "What the hell is this..."
* Leave Behind a Pistol
* Literary Allusion Title: the "Clear and present danger" clause in law. Title Dropped in the book. Interestingly, it is related to the First Amendment freedom of speech provision and has little, if any, relevance to the plot.
* Neck Snap: Moira, in the film.
* Odd Friendship: Alan Trent, a gay Democrat from Massachusetts and Sam Fellows, a Mormon Republican from Arizona.
* Puppet Gun
* Rescued From Purgatory: ...sort of
* Revised Ending: Or, in the movie's case, reversed ending. The book ends with Ryan agreeing to keep the whole operation secret (which causes him trouble years later), Cutter Driven to Suicide and the Administration protected. The movie ends with Ryan angrily telling off the President, then spilling everything to a Senate committee.
* Running Gag: "Plus change."
* Right Man in the Wrong Place
* Ruthless Modern Pirates
* Shoot Out the Lock: Played straight for once, when Larson shoots out the lock at an airplane strip where Colonel Johns's chopper lands to refuel before heading out to Panache. Though it is slightly Justified in that he uses five rounds to do so and specifically aims to separate the lock mechanism from the door.
* Smug Snake
* Spy Speak
* The Cartel
* The Cavalry: after everything goes to hell, Ryan and Clark help organize a rescue for the troops left behind on the ground. The book goes into much further detail, with the Pave Low, their MC-130 support, Larson's King Beech, and the Panache all playing big roles.
* The Starscream: Col. Cortez
* Title Drop
* Western Terrorists
* You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The drug cartel intelligence officer Felix Cortez snaps Moira Wolfe's neck after getting from her the information his employer desired.
* This is in contrast to the book, where she's left alive, but made unavailable due to Escobedo using the information that Cortez had collected for an attack on a US delegation visiting Colombia. After the US discovers the source of the leak and gets her cooperation in capturing him, his returning to the US would have resulted in being arrested.
- Clear and present danger is a term used by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in the majority opinion for the case Schenck v. United States, concerning the ability of the government to regulate speech against the draft during World War I: Following Schenck v. United States, "clear and present danger" became both a public metaphor for First Amendment speech and a standard test in cases before the Court where a United States law limits a citizen's First Amendment rights; the law is deemed to be constitutional if it can be shown that the language it prohibits poses a "clear and present danger". However, it should be noted that the "clear and present danger" criterion of the Schenck decision was later modified by Brandenburg v. Ohio, and the test refined to determining whether the speech would provoke an imminent lawless action. The vast majority of legal scholars have concluded that in writing the Schenck opinion Justice Holmes never meant to replace the "bad tendency" test which had been established in the 1868 British case The Queen v. Hicklin and incorporated into American jurisprudence in the 1904 Supreme Court case U.S. ex rel. Turner v. Williams. This is demonstrated by the use of the word "tendency" in Schenck itself, a paragraph in Schenck explaining that the success of speech in causing the actual harm was not a prerequisite for conviction, and use of the bad-tendency test in the simultaneous Frohwerk v. United States and Debs v. United States decisions (both of which cite Schenck without using the words "clear and present danger"). However, a subsequent essay by Zechariah Chafee entitled “Freedom of Speech in War Time” argued despite context that Holmes had intended to substitute clear and present danger for the bad-tendency standard a more protective standard of free speech. Bad tendency was a far more ambiguous standard where speech could be punished even in the absence of identifiable danger, and as such was strongly opposed by the fledgling ACLU and other libertarians of the time. Having read Chafee's article, Holmes decided to retroactively reinterpret what he had meant by "clear and present danger" and accepted Chafee's characterization of the new test in his dissent in Abrams v. United States just six months after Schenck, perhaps the only time in history where a single legal scholar changed the course of jurisprudence. Significantly unlike Abrams, the cases of Schenck, Frohwerk, and Debs had all produced unanimous decisions. Justice Brandeis soon began citing the "clear and present danger" test in his concurrences, but the new standard was not accepted by the full court until its official adoption in Brandenburg v. Ohio fifty years later.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)