The next window into Dante's Hell - Liberals assault the idea of a "culture of life."

You can see the initial eddies and currents.

The O'Reilly Factor had Sam Harris, the author of The End of Faith on tonight. Harris explicitly denied that there was anything meaning to the concept of "the culture of life." He counterposed "religious dogmatism" against "mercy." Harris also - eventually - conceded that depressed drug addicts who wanted a "hot shot" should be given such a death at their request. Harris is on record as saying that society should not respect anyone's religious faith.

So, the end point of Western Civilizations long courtship with tolerance is the end of tolerance.

On another front, Get Religion posts on "sneer quoting the Culture of Life." They mention an Anna Quindlen column where she writes that the "culture of life is an empty suit of a phrase"

On the other hand, kudos to Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox who observed that Roe v. Wade started a trend which resulted in an environment where Judge Greer could easily - all too easily - find that Terry Schiavo would have wanted to die. O'Reilly's response is that the debate is about the utility of Schiavo - her parents found utility in her continued existence, while she herself could do nothing on her own and, therefore, had no utility to herself. Lost on O'Reilly is the notion that this approach turns people into things, whose right to life turns on their perceived utility; under this approach people are not treated as ends in and of themselves. (So, score 1 for the utilitarians, zero for Kant.) Napolotano concluded with the observation that a decision in a Schiavo-type case forty years ago would have left her alive and with her parents.

I don't normally think this, but kudo to Judge Napolitano.