The Martyr of Passover

Echoing the Easter massacres, though fortunately on a much smaller scale -- a single gunman, a single death -- another attempt to profane the most sacred. Or, more properly, to argue about what is and is not sacred; and to sacralize, in the old way with blood, that which the enemy holds sacred into something sacred for you. The Easter bombings were intended to be like the transformation of Hagia Sophia from basilica into mosque; this, an attempt to transform the day that God passed over the Jews into a day for killing them in the name of a mythical race.

Fortunately, even in California, an armed citizen -- an off-duty Border Patrol officer, by reports -- was there to stop it. And fortunately, in America unlike in Sri Lanka, the enemy sought to do his work with guns instead of bombs. There's not so much you can do with bombs, not even if you are armed and brave. As long as they stick to guns there is a fighting chance.

These attacks are attacks on a particular religion, but they are also attacks on the American ideal of religious liberty: on the idea that it is all right for you to be a different faith from me, that I don't consider it my business just as long as you grant me the same courtesy. The enemy isn't just an enemy of Christians here or Jews there; they are our common enemy insofar as they feel it proper to turn people into blood sacrifices in order to exert control over us.

We must oppose all of this sort because our cause is liberty. Non enim propter gloriam diuivias aut honores pugnamus set propter libertatum: quam nemo bonus nisi simul vita amittit.