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This is why the Congress had to act, because of its solemn obligation to defend an individual who represented all handicapped individuals, all women who may have been the unfortunate victims of domestic violence and lived. It was for this very reason that the Due Process Clause is an integral part of the Constitution that anyone would have picked up in a first year political science class.

The connection between the founders of our nation and Pope John Paul II's comments in 1994 in devising our nation's test of its own values was no coincidence. The pope said, "the ultimate test of our American society would be in protecting the life of every human being but especially "the weakest and the most defenseless."

Terri Schiavo's death created both a moral dilemma as well as a moral revolution. Her death was expected by most of the morally disconnected in America because they wrote off her fate as being "merely a family matter." It was truly unparalleled since the infancy of our nation. Patrick Henry, another great Revolutionary War figure, said it best in describing the great "unbothered masses" in our nation. He also said, "It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to a painful truth. Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation?" I suppose he was a radical right-winger of his time because after all those good, uninvolved "citizen patriots" were just waiting for the British to simply come to their collective senses.

Patrick Henry decided that the individual mattered. "I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and to provide for it." That is what the intervention in Terri's life was about. Our nation was dangerously becoming consumed by our own moral passivity. When there exists a question about whether or not a person is to be put to death by the state, then it is a true test of what our nation is and what it has become if we sit and do nothing and just wait -- like those who just hoped for the British to return to their senses -- or simply bury our collective heads in the sand.

Justice was not blind in Florida. Its eyes were wide open. What were those who believed in Terri's constitutional Rights supposed to do? Not get angry because an American citizen was being put to death? What were people of conscience supposed to do, just wait until "Good Judge Greer" came to his senses? No I think Patrick Henry again described the dilemma that moral disengagers conveniently ignore but secretly embrace. "Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?" or in the case of Terri Schiavo murdered sooner because no one cared?

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