On the Deaths of the Members of the French Humor Magazine

History teaches us things - not the least of which is that attempts by people who fear ideas to squelch differing opinions and especially to squash those who would poke fun at their ideas are founded in the weakness of those ideas.

As previously set out here, whether the tyranny is in one man - like Hitler, Stalin or Mao - or in a mob, these thugs are terrified of ideas. Ideas that threaten their comfort zones.

Evidence? The killings at Charlie Hebdo:

In the latest attack, terrorists armed with guns and shouting "Allahu akbar" murdered several of the publication's staff and two police officers at its Paris office. At the time of publication, the terrorists are still on the run.

Pertinent thoughts from a previous fight against fascism:

They are afraid of words and thoughts; words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home — all the more powerful because forbidden — terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind.
Winston Churchill, in "The Defence of Freedom and Peace (The Lights are Going Out)", radio broadcast to the United States and to London (16 October 1938)

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.

Robert A. Heinlein

And when a radical element of a religion undertakes to control those who are not its members?

Welcome to the 15th Century.