What's fascinating to me about the Schiavo business is how many self defined intellectuals have missed the point. "Tube Rape" is Lindsay Beyerstein's term for the goal of Jeb Bush's attempt to circumvent the law.

On the other hand, Josh Marshall, who's basically a journalist and an honest neoliberal, and to whom Brian Leiter would never link -since he's not a specialist- has been fine, and recommends USA today and even Sullivan as getting at the subtleties of this mess. But Crooked Timber and academia, at least the sort of academia that is willing to commune even casually with libertarian theology, have been apoplectic.

My response is simple. If someone is acting irrationally and you can not reason with them, the next step is to try to understand the reason behind their reasons, the logic behind the illogic. The problem liberal reformers have, and this is on old Anglo-American disease, is that if you accept that people act irrationally then the whole politics of rationality and progress goes out the window. Without reason, what's left?
This is the vulgar anti-freudianism of Chomsky et al. and it disgusts me.

Enough for now. It seems clear that the republican cynics overplayed their hand and that any violence at all will disastrous for them.
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Update: Jeb's culture of life