Editorial — The answer to the killing is simple, but where is it?
How can we stop this?
EDITORIAL — There’s a “simple” fix to horrors like the one that just concluded near Paris on Friday and so many others that continue to take lives and shatter confidence in our Western democratic system.
If we could all, on all sides, lighten up and cut each other some slack, the killings and intolerance would stop. Easier said than done, of course, and nothing can excuse the mass murders of innocents.
But if only we could, as Rodney King so famously said in 1992, all get along. If we could be more polite, less cynical, less confrontational, less dogmatic. Whether it’s satirical cartoons, political rhetoric or religious intolerance, if we could just take a step back and hit the pause button…
On the other hand, we also all have to learn to be more tolerant of dissenting opinions, which seems a lesson those engaging in terror can’t be taught.
Whenever we’re attacked, we are compelled to threaten, to declare that we won’t be intimidated, that we will endure, that we’ll strike back. We speak of the senselessness of the killings, of the cowardice, of defending ourselves.
Of course, it is senseless and despicable — “barbarity” as French president Hollande called it — and such words comfort us, but those who have become our enemies believe they’re the ones who are being attacked, the ones who are defending their beliefs and their way of life. They believe it.
At the same time as we condemn such acts, as we must, we’ve also got to understand that demonizing the enemy won’t achieve a truce. There’s nothing rational about this debate nor about this war, because no one wins.
How can we get through to each other? The answer to it all is there somewhere, but where?
ArmchairMayor.ca 
There is a deep and bitter irony in the fact that those countries now ravaged by immigration problems and cultural conflicts were at one time the great colonial powers that abused and exploited the peoples they now fear and distrust.
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I heard a replaying on CBC radio today of Lyndon B. Johnson’s famous/infamous Daisy commercial in which he said, “We must love each other, or we must die,” which apparently was a paraphrase of W.H. Auden’s poem “September 1, 1939” that included the line “We must love one another or die.” Whichever version you prefer, I find these words particularly profound at this time.
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im not sure tolerance of ideas that trump human rights is a good thing, in whichever form/value/belief it exists. in this case, an idea via an extremist group was ‘executed’, and many humans’ lives were taken away. violating ideas start/sprout from an original ‘seed’…we need to do more the ‘nip it (these ideas) in the bud’, but obliterate such seeds. using words like racism, provoking or blasphemy to protect these executed ideas, are we not seriously entering a destructive mindset of denial or justification? we need to be careful of exactly what we are ‘tolerating’ by using a filter of human rights.
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Barbaric? How many Muslims have been killed in the middle east by “Western” bombs and ammunitions in the last few decades? How many children are now orphans in the middle east? How many parents had to bury their children in the middle east? What? They do not matter? Say that again?
What outrages me the most is the double-standards of western mass-media.
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I agree that terrorizing the terrorists won’t work; we are too terrified.
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Intolerance breeds intolerance. Despite all the talk about freedom of speech and the importance of democracy, Europe today is not a bastion of tolerance. People from North Africa are not treated well in France. It’s very difficult for foreigners to make their way up the ladder in that society. Being constantly frustrated with the society they live in, young people are increasingly drawn into the wrong crowd, be it muslim extremists, criminal gangs or whatever. If one looks at the countries where terrorist attacks have occurred — e.g. France, England, Spain, one will probably discover that their treatment of immigrants or second generation immigrants is problematic. Racism and discrimination is alive and well in Europe.
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