THE TERRI SCHIAVO TRAGEDY has been seized on by long-time critics of the “religious right” to launch attack after attack on the legitimacy of political action on the basis of religious belief. This attack has ignored the inconvenient participation in the debate–on the side of resuming water and nutrition for Terri Schiavo–of the spectacularly not-the-religious-rightness of Tom Harkin, Nat Hentoff, Jesse Jackson, and a coalition of disability advocacy groups.

The attack has also been hysterical. After Congress acted–ineffectively, it turned out–Maureen Dowd proclaimed that “theocracy” had arrived in the land. Paul Krugman warned that assassination of liberals by extremists was not far off. And the Internet frenzy on the left was even more extreme.