Where Have All the Good Guys Gone?

The unfortunate attacks on Charlie Hebdo have brought out quite a bit of emotions and viewpoints to the forefront of international discourse. Many media outlets have come out in support of the magazine, broadcasting its sacrilegious cover, showing solidarity against terrorism. It seems like some on the Left are finally waking up to the brutal nature of these agents of evil, but I must ask: What took them so long?!

Terrorists who have shared the killers’ ideals have been killing people as far as I can remember. In 1983, terrorists bombed a military barracks in Beirut killing 299 American and French servicemen. They didn’t wake up then. Terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 killing six people and injuring 1,042 others. Leftists refused to wake up then. The American embassy in Kenya was bombed in 1998. Fatalities totaled 213 people who paid the ultimate price and, yet, the Left did not wake up. In 2000, the USS Cole was bombed in a suicide attack killing 17 sailors; still, nothing.  September 11, 2001 woke up some for a little while; but, as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq heated up, many in the Left went back to their old ways. Opinions were largely unchanged after the London bombings in 2005 and 2007 and the brutal killing of a British soldier in 2013.  

With all of these incidents, in addition to the people killed daily by terrorism, why have the tragic deaths of 9 far Left satirists, two police officers, and one maintenance worker finally moved the needle? Well, for starters, there is reality in the fact that unless one can relate to a tragedy, there is little individual interest. This is only part of the issue, however. A great example of Leftist attitudes can be found in David Wong’s 6 Ways to Keep Terrorists From Ruining the World (The article does have some vulgar language and liberal leanings; so, read at your own risk). While the article is definitely well-intentioned, it totally misses reality with how terrorists act and think. The article condemns the actions of nations in retaliating violently to the violence of terrorists, noting that this action is exactly (unknowingly) what the terrorists want us to do. This sentiment is something we see a lot in fiction in the dichotomy between good versus evil: “Don’t kill the villain because you don’t want to become him.”

The argument is childish at best and not based in reality. Violence is not the problem in retaliation, it is resolve. Ask yourself this question, “Why do these attacks keep happening?” The first reason is that these men are evil and want nothing more than death and destruction. The second reason is that we, the good guys, have no resolve and no will to continue the fight against them ong term. The use of the term good guys was intentional to lead us into my next point. I want you to realize something very important: WE ARE THE GOOD GUYS!

When I say we, I am not specifically talking about the West because many different nations and citizens fit the profile. If you love freedom, you support some notion of free enterprise, and you support human rights, I have news flash for you: you are one of the good guys! It is important that I repeat this notion because it is a narrative that Left leaning media in countless nations have been trying to oppress. Moral equivalency has really taken a hold of the current Western way of thinking and it has needlessly cost the lives of many individuals by weakening the will of these nations to fight. Sure, we have our problems, as leftists love to identify, but do we violently oppress women as the Taliban do? Do we suppress freedom of expression in the way China does?  Do we imprison any dissenters of opinion as Russia does? The answer to all of these questions is and astounding NO!

Hollywood and leftists within the media have long supported the idea that the last justifiable war was World War II with Hitler being an easily distinguishable villain. Reality is much grimmer. Hitler was not an aberration and we continue to see similarly evil individuals appear and spread their malice across the globe. Ho Chi Minh, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Mao Tse Tung, Kim Jong Il, Pol Pot, Muammar Qaddafi, and Charles Taylor have been guilty of evil on par with that of Hitler since the second world war; yet, we, freedom loving individuals, can’t take the moral high ground against them?  

Let’s pray that we gain back our resolve that has been lost against evil and tyranny before it is too late. We do not have to kill every last one of these terrorist scumbags; we just have to make them think that we aren’t afraid to. This can only be realized through the strength of our convictions that we are the good guys and not as evil as our enemies.