I don't know that I can write about this, today. Not with any coherency, and I may never be able to do that, this has shaken me.
Others have written fluently, and I'll share those words.
Click on links to read more, and feel free to share, either this post, or the cartoon I created for it.
We free men mourn the staff of Charlie Hebdo. We might not have agreed with them on most things, but they were our brothers and sisters, unafraid in the face of threats or attacks.
Rest in peace and may free men remember them and honor them. And may their example light the path.
ONLY speaking unafraid and confronting the worst movements with unbended knee will we reform the tyranny that holds most Muslims in subjection. Only knowing they’re beyond the pale will bring reform. And only then will there be peace.
Free Speech Isn't
And that is the price of free speech. It’s the knowledge that not everybody out there is a mature adult who is capable of thinking, “that’s offensive” and even saying as much without feeling the need to go and kill whoever offended them. It’s a price that needs to be paid.
Islam Attacks
Second, to the moral equivalence crowd, and their inevitable cries about how everybody is all equally the same, and Christians and Jews have done bad things too, and their fears about the inevitable backlash against Muslims that never materializes because the west aren’t barbarians… To you people, to the smug, self-righteous leftists, go to hell.
Just like everybody else, I got up this morning and checked the internet. I read the reports. Those pissed me off, but they aren’t shocking at this point. Islamic terrorists saw people’s heads off, blow up buildings, busses, trains, marathons, shoot up hospitals, shoot up schools, kidnap hundreds of girls to rape them and sell them as sex slaves, on and on and on. They do this often in countries where they can operate with impunity, and they do it occasionally in the west when they can get away with it.
This particular attack hit the west, and it was galling because it struck directly at one of our sacred values, free speech, the ability to speak out against whatever we are feel compelled to speak against. So of course, the apologist cowards in western media started blurring out pictures of the offending cartoons.
Eyewitness
I also knew from the location just who’d been attacked: Charlie-Hebdo, the magazine known for many things, but, above all, for its fearlessness in publishing caricatures of Mohamed. They’d been firebombed for this in 2011, but their response — in effect — was the only one free men would ever consider: “As long as we’re alive, you’ll never shut us up.”
They are no longer alive. They managed to shut them up. And finally, one of the cartoonists who was killed in the attack said: "I'd rather die standing than live on my knees." --Charbonnier
I salute you, sir.