Today we are all "Charlie Hebdo"

The nightcrawlers have slithered out of their lairs once again in a brutal and barbarous attack on freedom butchering dozens in the offices of France's press icon of satire "Charlie Hebdo." The paper's "crime" was satirizing Islamists and Islamism. It had been firebombed in 2011 for republishing the Mohammed cartoons.

Now, it is once again the duty of all free people to gather bold resolve and  expose, denounce and destroy the vermin who perpetrate such horror so that we can rid our society of their pestilence. We can have victory over terror and we can have victory despite the terror. We can build communities of conscience that  -  together – will overcome the mightiest wellsprings of hatred and oppression. Because together people find courage. But we must all have the courage – even the audacity - to take the first step. Silence is not an option. 

We have for too long heard words of politically-correct appeasement in our public discourse where terror and terrorists are concerned. No evil has ever been defeated with correctness or appeasement. Particularly not this one. If our corner of the free world is the last place – even the only place – that tries to rally the public on the reality of what Yair Lapid called today’s “total evil” then let us continue to do so. 

To those who would say that the haters are isolated and disturbed individuals, I would answer that some are. But it is equally true that many act with complete pre-meditation knowing exactly what they are doing and are well-funded with astonishing infrastructure support.

Our public discourse in this country and this province - because it is too often colored by the moral relativism and equivalency of those who think it “progressive” -  has given the haters liberty of license. It is time for pushback.  It is time to speak truth to evil. Even if it hurts.

Sweeping words of hate under the rug because of sensibilities is a lame policy and a prescription for a corroded democracy. 

We must become a stronger and more mature society. It cannot all be about a sense of false security in the face of the haters within. Sadly the world has much to learn from history. Today we are all "Charlie Hebdo." And more than ever we need to remember Churchill's warning that, "An appeaser is someone who feeds the crocodile hoping he will eat him last. But eat him he will.”