If it's all about life, why aren't we involved in Sudan?

"This is about defending life," said Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, trying to explain the extraordinary paroxysm of government activity this weekend. A frenzy that saw the generally inert Congress working late into the night and the constantly recreating President Bush cutting short a weekend on his Texas ranch to hurry back to Washington.

He's exactly right. But what is "defending life" about? It is, of course, a code phrase for a set of religious values. People do not "defend life" by pushing for universal health care or for immediate action in Sudan -- activities that would defend life in the usual sense of the term. No, in this country, "defending life" has come to mean a specific moral agenda: no abortion, limited stem cell research, no assisted suicide, no death with dignity.

Like any brand of extremism, the "defend life" philosophy breeds irrationalities -- the zealot who loves life so much he murders an abortion doctor; the life-affirming protesters holding enormous photos of mutilated fetuses up to cringing pedestrians on Madison Street.

The particulars of the Terri Schiavo case are unimportant -- there are decisions such as this made in hospitals across the country every day, patients beyond hope being allowed to enter the final stage of life. What is important -- frighteningly important -- is that the federal government, caught in the thrall of its religious supporters, is trying to exert its raw power to win a symbolic victory in a religious debate. This isn't about saving one brain-dead woman. This is about wrenching the country back to some imagined Eden.

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