Insisting that the best weapon to deploy against terrorists was "thinking," MSNBC host Chris Hayes on his Wednesday All In program lamented various reactions to last week's Charlie Hebdo spree shooting as uncritical, unthinking overreactions. Lumped in with controversial tweets by Rupert Murdoch and Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas), Hayes blasted the lower house of the French National Assembly for voting overwhelmingly to ramp up airstrikes against ISIS.
"France is already on a war footing," Hayes whined, "with its defense minister proclaiming that ISIS must be wiped out and the country deploying 10,000 troops to boost security within the borders of France." Hayes then connected the dots to the American Left's favored bogeyman, George W. Bush and his response to the 9/11 attacks:
France's lower house of parliament voted 488 to 1 to extend French airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq. 488 to 1. I recognize those kinds of margins: the sort of margin the PATRIOT Act passed by and the authorization for the use of military force to invade Afghanistan.
Moments later, Hayes melodramatically closed his monologue and introduced guest Reza Aslan with this pompous self-righteous pompous prattle:
When we see the blood splattered on the floor of the Charlie Hebdo offices, the mourners at the funeral of the French Jews who were murdered solely because they were Jews, we naturally, rightly, reach for words like "evil."
We conjure figures like Hitler and feel for a moment that the crimes we have witnessed have suddenly clarified everything. But that clarity, that clarity is a trap. It's the terrorists' own lie, the one they wish to peddle to us all. It is the propaganda of fools and butchers. Because these moments call for rigor, for resolve, and the courage to be clear-eyed and to resist the tug of cheap sentiment, easy solutions, and broad categorizations. Because the terrorists want us above all not to think. They want us to cower or to rage or to fight. But thinking is always, and remains, our best weapon.
