Guns are never a match for ideas

IN THE long and continuing elaboration of the

meaning of freedom in nourishing human

dignity, historical agency, self respect and mu-

tual regard, it always seems ironic that it’s the

lethal, if futile, gestures of zealots that most effec-

tively stimulate our passion for liberty.

Liberty, of course, is a demanding affair, an essen-

tially indivisible condition that abhors the tyranny

of any single claim to truth; it legitimates humanity

in the singular, and so relies on argument and con-

testation and, thus, respect for the ideas of others.

In his seminal defence of free speech of 1644, the

poet John Milton observed that “that which purifies

us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary”.

This is a difficult idea for many – especially for

those who are so self-convinced that they cannot tol-

erate an idea that is not wholly their own.

And it is simply this – a fear, really, and a pitiful-

ly groundless one – that cost the lives of the

Parisian cartoonists in the offices of Charlie Hebdo

this week.

There is already a fierce debate – and an impor-

tant one – about the intellectual and moral merits

or otherwise of the unabashedly provocative Char-

lie Hebdo oeuvre.

Many are torn between supporting an idea they

take to be virtuous – the importance of free speech

– and rejecting material that is so obviously intend-

ed to offend and inflame.

But this is not the question the gunmen have

posed for us. The question is whether we contend

with – or just kill off – opinion we disagree with.

In the contest between cartoons and Kalash-

nikovs, the cartoons win hands down every time, if

only because, where the gun permits only one idea,

the death of thought itself, the pen is the fount of

limitless imagining.

It is easy enough to make a mantra of that

poignant phrase,

one worth repeating

but if it helps us

remember – not the horror, but the hope – then it’s