All I can say is that we know the script. The Englaro family sought to be treated with dignity as citizens of a civil state. Justice slowly acknowledged their reasons and rights as then did many professional medical structures that abided by law and court rulings. A very sober citizen, parsimonious in words, Beppe Englaro made simple demands and plain sense questions. Yet his words and his family's wishes were drowned by the din. He asked why should he have to comply to the dictates of a church to which he did not belong. He asked why should a government seek to block a final court ruling. He has asked for silence now in keeping with his character. He wants to be left alone. He has a right to his pain.

There will be masses said for a spanking new saint who never was a Catholic. Primetime teary-eyed candle holders, camera angled from below. Within minutes of the news of her death the Senator Quagliariello- one of those Larnian worms that make up the people of liberty- accused the opposition of murder. The fascist Gasparri insulted the President of the Republic for not having signed an unconstitutional decree "in time to save the poor Eluana." In the days to come, Berlusconi's Larnian worms will monopolize every niche of the news with their obscene accusations and squalid piety. The government will seek to ramrod this bill and others through parliament in the name of Berlusconi's liberty to rule totally, indefinitely, with impunity.

Just as in Orwell's Animal Farm where laws were finally reduced to but one, this one-sentence law that will pass in the days to come in the name of their Saint Eluana, these few lines attack the foundations of civil liberties.

Until the approval of a complete and organic law disciplining life's end, nutrition and hydration as forms of vital support and physiologically finalized to alleviate suffering, can in no way be suspended by persons assisting individuals who are incapacitated to provide for themselves.

Where here is a person's right to dispose of himself and his body as he wishes? Who then claims rights over my body? Am I mine or the State's? Or worse, do I belong to some sort of fashionable god whose earnest acolytes piously enslave us with their compassionate dictates?

Garibaldi didn't mince words. He described the pope as "a cubic meter of horseshit." It's no wonder he was not allowed to take back Rome.