If there can be any solace in the horrific attack on the Paris offices of the weekly magazine, Charlie Hebdo, let it be this: the cowards behind the guns, and the manipulating cowards behind them, admitted both their weakness and their defeat in this same act which condemns them.
Because if your ideology or tenets or piety are so fragile they cannot stand satire, then they are worthless. And if your sense of honor is so deranged as to lead you to slaughter the unarmed and defenseless, then you are beneath contempt and beyond pity. The cowards who murdered the editors and artists and the police officers protecting Charlie Hebdo, should be and are being hunted to exhaustion. So should be any that supported and encouraged them.
More than anything else, though, Charlie Hebdo should drive on. Nothing would refute the murderous hate more than a fresh, unblinking and unafraid serving of well-barbed satire. I sincerely hope that’s forthcoming.
Je suis Charlie – and so too is anyone that cherishes free expression and rejects religious barbarism.
