Yesterday night the dreadful attacks in Paris have happened, today our politicians already call for restrictions of civil rights, more surveillance, more totalitarianism.
As if it had helped in France! After the attack on Charlie Hebdo, the French government has already introduced laws that are widely criticized as too broad, giving the police almost unrestricted and uncontrolled power, laws that the next dictatorship will be thankful for.
It didn’t work. It can’t work. Whenever you take freedoms away, democracy dies a little, but regardless of how much freedom you take away, there is always plenty of opportunity for a small, determined force to wage terror, especially when they don’t value their lives.
Whatever you do, this reflexive first reaction is completely wrong. I don’t know what the answer is, but it can’t be to shut down democracy.