Early in the twentieth century, the Swiss psychologist, Hermann Rorschach, developed a technique to better understand the thinking and perception of his patients. That technique, the Rorschach Inkblot Test, is understood today as a tool helpful to psychologists in distinguishing, among other things, typical perceptions from atypical ones. Simply put, if you don't see enough of what non-psychotic people see when shown the inkblots, then there is a good probability that you are psychotic--or at least gravely out of touch with mainstream thinking.
The human inkblot known to us as Mrs. Terry Schiavo provided the country with a clear look at our own moral perceptions.
Like the Rorschach inkblot studies comparing psychiatric patients with non-patients, the public opinion data regarding Mrs. Schiavo are in.
According to a March 23rd CBS poll, the vast majority of Americans agree that her feeding tube should have been removed, that to have it re-inserted would have been wrong, and that Congress and the president self-servingly overstepped their roles to try to have the tube re-inserted, an unusually intrusive legislative/executive act that proved unsuccessful. Like the healthy majority of those exposed to Rorschach's inkblots, most of us see the complex, tragic Schiavo situation fairly similarly: we do not want governmental intervention when it comes to important, private matters such as making individual, life-and-death health-care decisions. We do not want our government to invade the sanctity of a couple's marriage. We stand contrary to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's condemnation that the judiciary branch of government was "arrogant" and "out of control" in its repeated rulings not to re-insert Mrs. Schiavo's feeding tube.
America's collective thought regarding the Schiavo case is encouraging for a number of reasons. First, despite the intense emotions involved in the case, most Democrats and Republicans, most evangelicals and non-evangelicals, and most men and women came to the same conclusion. Whereas the 2004 presidential race was close, the national view about Mrs. Schiavo turned out to be a comparative slam-dunk. Guided by a personal, individual sense of right and wrong, and despite our diversity, most of us came to the same moral conclusion. Additionally, the case of Mrs. Schiavo offered Americans an opportunity to show our government that we are a thinking, moral America. And we did. The CBS poll clearly illustrates there is a moral majority in the United States. To be sure, this moral majority differs from the non-diverse, self-proclaimed one of the 1980's, the one that capitalized its name and demonized a huge swath of America. This country's "new" moral majority is actually comprised of most Americans and, also unlike its predecessor, it is not on a witch hunt.
Sadly, however, the new moral majority differs from most of our elected Washington officials as summed up by President Bush's "culture of life" slogan and by the landslide Congressional vote to re-insert Mrs. Schiavo's feeding tube. What the president and Congress fail to recognize is that the new moral majority cuts across lines of political affiliation and religious beliefs, and its members do not see themselves as some sort of evil antithesis to a culture of life. Americans do not want feeding tubes summarily pulled from, or inserted into, patients. We want such decisions to be personal and loving, not rote and bureaucratic. Most remain wary of, if not overtly against, the pre-emptive war in Iraq. With over 1,500 Americans dead to date, and many more wounded, we just do not see the culture of life in it. Most Americans also rightfully fail to see the culture of life in denying adequate financial support to veterans and their surviving spouses. Red- and blue-state Americans will never be persuaded by the noisy few who bellow the "culture of life" slogan, no matter how sincere their cries may sound. Americans simply will not shift away from their powerful sense of individual freedom and responsibility--responsibility to each other and freedom from governmental interference. These things are, after all, what this country is founded upon. No slogan will cause Americans to move away from their deeply held belief that meddling into the private affairs of a married couple is not the business of a democratic government. Whether our government officials see it yet, the vast majority of Americans are silently holding hands in moral solidarity. It is Washington and a handful of others who do not perceive the moral inkblots in America they way most Americans do. Washington's response to Mrs. Schiavo's plight has now made this obvious.
Some may be frightened that our elected officials are, on matters of morality and of the role of government, out of touch with mainstream thinking. Not me. The Schiavo case has shown me that despite all of our differences, political and otherwise, Americans are not so different from one another in some basic way. It's comforting to know that those who belong to a different political party than ours, those who live in a geographically far off place from our homes, and those who worship very differently from their neighbors see an important, moral issue the same way. We're diverse, yes; but, we are not the polarized enemies we might once have thought we were, or that some divisive-sounding slogan tries to make us be. It is reassuring to realize, as the CBS poll strongly suggests, that most Americans also see the role of government the same way: institutional bodies of servants who respect and who further the wishes of its people. There is something unifying--something centrist--in this, and to me it is a welcome relief. It inspires optimism that the new moral majority is a large, diverse voting bloc. The Houston Chronicle's April 3, 2005, poll results of likely voters in Tom DeLay's district --indicating that if the election for Congress were held today more people would vote against him than for him--inspires hope that the new moral majority will elect officials who see the country and the world the way we do. Our quiet, steadfast solidarity reminds us that like Mrs. Schiavo--may she be resting in a much better place than she has over the past fifteen years--our moral convictions are not replaceable, even though our elected officials are.