Like the attacks of 9/11/01, the recent terrorist atrocity in Russia has been so shockingly evil in character and scale, that most of us are still left in choked silence about it. Sometimes it feels like our hearts and souls might finally be damaged beyond repair. But like last time (and every time), we must overcome our grief, once more gather our courage, regain our resolve to prevent such enormities, recover our hope, and again try to make sense of a stunningly senseless act of the most extreme barbarity possible. As the usual sensationalistic replay of the footage of the tragedy dies down, a few brave souls have taken up the challenge of bringing reason to bear on this calamity, and I salute them. Every decent or even normal human being knows that those who prepetrate these acts are vile monsters, but all too often our hatred for them and anger at them gets turned toward other decent and moral people who might disagree with us about why these things happen or how to prevent them, thereby poisoning rational discussion of the issues involved. Let’s see if we have learned anything from the recent bitter past.
Here are a couple of starting points in the blog world to look at, and you’ll find more things from there.