A murderous rampage hurled the words Charlie Hebdo into common knowledge last week. The French journalists who paid with their lives for having irreverent ideas would likely appreciate that.
Armed fanatics can quickly cut down unarmed innocents. But they will wholly fail in their larger quest.
For an incessant clash of ideas and ideals is essential to the higher nature of humankind. The necessary clangor of disparate thoughts can, should — and will — survive sustained, desperate, violent assault. Cracking AK-47’s, shrapnel of suicide bombs, and even minds sealed off to new thinking cannot obliterate freedom’s path.
The French have long known that, as have Americans and those of other like-minded nations where a common thread of liberty is sewn deeply into a national fabric.
The marketplace of ideas is a lodestone in the divine right of free people to think for themselves – and govern themselves accordingly.
There is risk in that. Which means that the free world will forever be taxed a wrenching, unavoidable price in blood and suffering to safeguard ideals that are so abhorrent to some.
The latest entries in this ongoing ledger are the journalists, French police and hostages killed last week. They died as the result of a cowardly attempt by jihadist terrorists to murder a way of life, a way of thinking.
Civilized societies simply cannot countenance violence against people merely for espousing ideas some find unpopular or offensive.
We who toil in journalism intuitively get the preciousness of our forefathers’ profound vision. Our practitioners live – and sometimes die – trying to measure up to the noble obligation enabled here by the First Amendment. Yet the five freedoms spelled out therein equally shield all Americans — not just those who pursue news for a living.
Many in our business have seen guns drawn, or used. We bear witness each day to the sight of blood spilled for no good reason.
We know that journalism’s end product is, at times, unpopular with many, and downright dangerous to some. We accept that ours can be a risky craft, especially in troubled places.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says some 1,106 of us have been killed since 1992. The journos in Paris bore the risks for a reason. They believed in the right of people to know — and to think.
All of us in this endeavor quickly learn that the truth — or as close to it as we can humanly get — stings, smarts, angers and enrages at times. And we believe that frank disclosures and the raucous debate that often follows helps perpetually reinforce the freedom that the free too often take for granted.
Terrorists and murderers can never slay free expression and the liberty it supports. Not as long as brave men and women are willing to embody such principles. And defend them when push comes to shove.
