Metaphor of the Day...

...if not the century. Apropos the Schiavo case, especially "those who brim with passion not just for the state-approved quietus, but with fury for those who oppose it," James Lileks concludes, "you never think you have need of any chocks until you're in the truck, and you realize it's rolling down the hill. Backwards." Down a slippery slope.

UPDATE: Then, there's this, from Mark Steyn:

In practice, a culture that thinks Terri Schiavo's life...has no value winds up ascribing no value to life in general. Hence, the shrivelled fertility rates in Europe and in blue-state America: John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest birth rates; George W Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest.

The 19th-century Shaker communities were forbidden from breeding and could increase their number only by conversion. The Euro-Canadian-Democratic Party welfare secularists seem to have chosen the same predicament voluntarily, and are likely to meet the same fate. The martyrdom culture of radical Islam is a literal dead end. But so is the slyer death culture of post-Christian radical narcissism. This is the political issue that will determine all the others: it's the demography, stupid.