Dealing with Nutbags...

SO yesterday a bunch of nutbags went into the offices of a French satirical magazine and killed 12 people with assault rifles.  They did it to avenge the honor of a man who has been dead for several hundred years, honor that had been besmirched because the people in the office drew funny pictures of the dead guy.

Notice I am leaving the whole idea of philosophy and religion out of this discussion because the truth is, no matter what your cause of belief system you never have the right to kill another person because of it. Full Stop. Period. End of story.  You can look at it from another way, if you have the right to do that to one someone who doesn't believe the way you do the, by extension, someone else has the right to come into your home or office and kill YOU.

Don't use justification based on the fervor of you belief or how important they are to you, that just makes you sound like an eight year old who is explaining why it was his right to eat the cake that was for dinner or a room mate who uses Sartre to establish her imperative for eating your leftovers from Beni-hanna the night before, it don't fly.

Now before you write me off as pacifist understand that I come from both a military family and have a profound understanding of the history here on this Blue Marble.  There are times when one group of people (or individual) get so out of hand from the accepted norm that they have to be dealt with. The Nazi are the prime example of this, although I hate to invoke that word ("Nazi") because there is the chance of triggering the social triggers they carry with them, namely that when yo compare another person or another individual to a Nazi you immediately lose veracity in your argument. Still it is an example when the rest of society looked at the actions of a group of people and said:

"You know you really shouldn't do that"

to which the Nazis replied

"Piss off"

So then the majority of people got together and decided to reason with the nazis...with extreme prejudice.

Can you see the difference?  If you can't then please stop reading my BLOG because at one point or another I am sure I will say something offensive and I don't want you charging into my studio with a gun and a balaclava.