"It is shameful that even today the Christian Democrats are still criticized for the one occasion on which, by sacrificing their leader, they demonstrated the very sense of duty to the state that they have always been accused of lacking. What, in fact, was Moro asking for? In those letters, the “distinguished statesman”—the man who had governed the country for over thirty years—demanded that the state renounce the principles upon which it is founded, its laws, and its institutions, all to save his own skin."