Terri Schiavo finally sucumbed to her enforced starvation yesterday, of course -- even as we were writing our final update.

This Blog has been somewhat purposefully consumed by the story of her final days, as many have noticed. During this period, we have received messages from well- and ill-wishers asking, "Why are you devoting so much time to this?"

Insisting, "There are other, more important things to write about!"

Demanding, "Get off the Schiavo thing! We get it already!"

Gnomon subscribes to the deuteronomic school of history: Good nations, in the judeo-christian sense of the word, prosper; bad nations eventually founder. Naive as it no doubt sounds to cynical political science professors, American has throughout its history tried as a whole to be a "good" nation.

As we pointed out in our first article, this was not a watershed in that we were doing something we've never done before. We have starved unwanted babies and disabled people to death for at least a decade now. But it was a profound crisis point in American history because this practice was for the first time brought squarely into the public consciousness and we were compelled to take sides.

John Leo has a very well-written article about this in the latest US News. Bioethics started as a judeo-christian effort to encourage a bias towards life in these difficultsituations. But secular scholars have hijacked Bioethics and made it into another tool to cheapen life, to progress toward euthanasia, and eventually eugenics, and frankly turn 2000 years of morality (that they eschew) upside down.

Folks, listen to your old Gnomon: Why did we harp on Terri Schiavo? Why is this episode so important? Why should you be concerned?

Because this was the point at which we as a people were confronted with the choice between convenience and life -- convenience or life on the road to a Gattaca-like, eugenically purified society as determined by the elite. If the push polls are to be believed, we chose convenience.

Our fervent hope is that this will mark the point we begin to walk back amoral bioethics laws we've allowed to malignantly bloom on the periphery of our conciousness for the past few decades, and rennovate the arrogant, legalistic judiciary that enforces them.

Our fervent hope is Terri Schiavo will spur this nation will reconsider before it is too late -- and choose life.