All across the world, we\u2019re typing the words \u201cJe Suis Charlie\u201d into our computers.<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n We\u2019re holding up pencils, trading memes about not giving in to fear and bravely demanding news agencies reprint the Charlie Hedbo cartoons, often from the comfort of our sofas while watching The Mindy Project or the hockey game. We\u2019re warriors for free speech and we will not be silenced.<\/p>\n It\u2019s ironic that our courage for free speech is predicated largely upon being able to express it through the distant, quasi-anonymous medium of social media, and it\u2019s even more ironic that the massacre in Paris has only an optical relationship to free speech rather than a substantive one.<\/p>\n It seems unlikely that there\u2019s a single person in the West who believes that curtailing free speech in order to placate terrorism is a tolerable, let alone debatable idea. The cartoons in question will go on to colonize the world, and we will gather together by the thousands in public squares to safeguard our liberties. Free speech will not die, not on our watch.<\/p>\n We should presume that the people responsible for these murders knew that this would be the outcome. It is, after all, always the outcome. Whenever an act of terror is committed, a robust surge of patriotism and anger\u2014which we often mistake for courage\u2014follows. Our tribe rises up and begins to throw rocks at their tribe, and last night as people were gathering in Place de la Republique in glowing, peaceful solidarity, others were enacting the revenge narrative by attacking mosques and bombing kebab shops.<\/p>\n