The case of Terri Schiavo, the young woman Gov. Jeb Bush saved from death by dehydration, is not "the case of a woman who is disabled being starved to death." Instead, "the real moral issue is these sort of thorny disagreements that occur in the settings of real families."

Watch the words. We live in a postmodern age where instead of searching for truth, symbolic analysts delight in magically transforming reality by manipulating the language. Change the word, and you change the thing.

Take the word "husband." In America, marriage trumps even the biological tie between parent and child. This is not a universal truth. In many cultures, the husband's father, as head of the family, would be the ultimate arbiter between family and state. But in our specific inherited marriage tradition, the two shall become "one flesh."

Michael Schiavo, who wants the hospital to discontinue giving Terri food and water, is Terri's husband in the sense that 13 years ago he was married to her. He is now living with another woman, who has given him one child and is pregnant with another. A million-dollar medical malpractice judgment is at stake: If he divorces Terri, she would get it. If he gets the hospital to refuse her food and water, he and his concubine and their children will get it. The conflict of interest is palpable. Terri and Michael are no longer "one flesh."

Michael's lawyer, seeking a grotesque sympathy for his client, argues that after 13 years with a wife in a vegetative state, doesn't Michael have the right to "walk away"?

Walk away?

Oh, are those the words for what Michael wants to do?

Or take another phrase, this time from Dudley Clendinen, a former Times reporter. Terri Schiavo, he tells us, is in a "permanent vegetative state." Permanent? The actual medical term is "persistent vegetative state." It is a small, but telling error. Continued...