Charlie Hebdo and Our Cultural Insanity

 I have to admit. I am kinda out of it. I turned off the television for good in the 1990's and don't watch tv--local or cable. I read headlines online, but I am so sick of the lies of the media, I tend to not go further than that. 

So when I saw the headlines about the massacre in France at the Charlie Hebdo magazine, I wept and prayed. So tragic. What is wrong with our world?

Then my mother called and informed me what  the cartoons in the magazine Charlie Hebdo were like, I cringed. Then I got angry.

The story is even more tragic than I imagined. The event in France highlights the increasingly insane and twisted worldview we westerners have embraced. 

This incredibly vile magazine, by all standards of good taste, should have been run out of business years ago. It's filth should never have been patronized by anyone who considers themselves decent. Sure, they may have had the legal right to publish it, but the public should have never allowed it to survive the free market. 

So now, in honor of the freedom of the press to publish pornographic filth, heads of state marched in the streets. While I know they were marching against violence, which I totally agree with, it is grotesquely tragic that Charlie Hebdo magazine was held high and made the martyr of free speech. 

Seeing all these people holding signs "Je suis Charlie" made me want to puke. I would be okay with holding up signs of "NO VIOLENCE in the name of God." Sure. Absolutely. But to purposefully attach one's sympathies to this abominable magazine rather than the people who died? Are we insane?  

That would be as creepy as chanting, "I am George" when abortionist George Tiller was murdered. We can decry the murder of any soul without elevating the victim to hero status.

Pope Francis got it right. Freedom of speech has its limits. When respectable people don't self-regulate their liberties, there will be consequences. Charlie Hebdo magazine should have been thrown out of France. When we allow such wickedness to flourish, wickedness will....flourish. 

Am I blaming the victims? Of course not. No one deserves to be assassinated. I am not taking up for those who killed them. But now, after such a tragedy, we should not align ourselves with such a magazine and make it look heroic for publishing such filth. 

I am NOT Charlie. Hell NO!!!