It’s not just whack-job nuts like me who fear the worst in the after-Schiavo big picture: Rick Brookhiser writes on that “culture of life” stuff Anna Quindlen doesn’t get in his Observer column this week. He writes, in part:

For years, family doctors and hospitals have made discreet use of the kindly overdose of morphine. But law is uncomfortable operating in the shadows. Where should its lines be drawn? Politics can teach us nothing about moral philosophy, but it does train us in figuring out who is winning, who is losing. When we look at the dynamics of life and death, which side is sweeping all before it? Is it the Christians praying in the street outside Terri Schiavo’s hospice? Is it Congress, whose two-party system is the serious and the showboaters? Is it George and Jeb Bush? Or is it a handful of medical experts, and the judges who heed them? Two branches of the federal government wrapped themselves in awesome majesty to save a woman’s life, but the bench held firm. In Europe, the tide is even stronger. The Dutch practice euthanasia so briskly that they will kill themselves even before the Islamists get around to it.

Read his whole piece here.