The attack on Charlie Hebdo has had the predictable effect of uniting Western politicians and media personalities from across the political spectrum in an orgy of self-aggrandizement—which is to say an orgy of self-delusion.

First, Charlie Hebdo is hardly the beacon of liberty that it is being made out to be.  Though concerned to insure that its speech was “free,” Charlie Hebdo is a leftist rag that is about as interested in protecting the speech of those to its right as is any other leftist socialist organization.

And we need no reminders of just how concerned “progressives” everywhere are to defend free speech: Courtesy of left-wing “progressives” in the vein of the staff of Charlie Hebdo, “hate speech” laws are legion throughout the “democracies” of the contemporary Western world—nowhere more so than in France.

Second, had this attack occurred against a Tea Party rally, a rightist European party, a “white nationalist” or an Islamic “watch” publication, would the whole Western world right now be identifying with the object of the attack?  I’d like to think so, but I’m doubtful.

Third, to be sure, we in the West must either hang together or hang separately, to borrow Franklin’s phrase.  Still, the truth of the matter is that the Charlie Hebdo massacre was not so much an attack on some abstract principle of free speech as it was an attack against the left’s worldview.  The symbolism here is rich.

(a)As was mentioned, Charlie Hebdo is a militantly secularist, incorrigibly anti-religious, socialist publication that has regularly mocked, not just all religions, but their rightist rivals who have been sounding the alarm for decades over France’s Islamic-friendly immigration policies and the nation-corroding Political Correctness that these policies both reflect and perpetuate.

Yet it was this expression of leftism, not the French Right, on which Islamic murderers set their sights.

(b)Muslims launched this murderous assault in Paris, France—a place that, from at least the time of the French Revolution, has been about as eligible a candidate for capital of the “progressive” world as any, a bastion of “enlightened”—i.e. leftist, “social-democratic”—thought.

France, at least in the popular imagination, is the embodiment of leftist ideology.  And yet pluralistic, multi-cultural, egalitarian France now finds itself under siege by just that subset of its population that is the creation of its own dogma. In a nutshell, here’s how it works: The champions of Equality—which, today, almost invariably assumes the form of “anti-racism”—blind themselves to the (not infrequently staggering) cultural differences between racial, ethnic, and religious groups in order to justify “inclusionary” national polices that essentially welcome, not the world as such, but the non-white, non-European, non-Christian world. However, though leftists refuse to recognize it, their ideals are not universal; they are specific to a Western or European civilization to which the immigrants whom they accommodate in the name of these ideals have little to no interest in assimilating.  In fact, a not inconsiderable number of these foreign peoples hold Equality, Multiculturalism, and the like in contempt.

To put it another way, the attack on Charlie Hebdo exposed the internal, the fatal, contradictions of leftist, “progressive” ideology.

Finally, those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones: Who is this “we” that is supposed to value freedom of speech?  In America, tragically, both “liberals” and “conservatives,” “the left” and “the right,” all too often reveal the extent to which they fear tipping Politically Correct sacred cows.

For instance, how many of our champions of free speech, whether they are on Fox News, “conservative” talk radio, NPR, or at The New York Times would be willing to allow satire regarding, say, Martin Luther King?  Imagine that some brave (or possibly suicidal?) cartoonist ridiculed Dr. King for having plagiarized his doctoral dissertation, or for his pathological infidelity?  Mainstream “conservatives” no less than “liberals” don’t permit such topics to be addressed in serious venues.  The outcry from the former would be just as deafening as that of the latter regardless of the genre in which King was critiqued.

There would be a fierce competition to see who could decry “racism” most loudly.  And in the event that those in the GOP-friendly press would argue in favor of freedom of speech, you can bet your mortgage that the argument would all but disappear under the mountain of assurances with which the person would qualify it, assurances that he or she finds the controversial material just as “reprehensible” or “racist” as everyone else.

Immigration is another issue.  Because the topic of immigration today is practically synonymous with Hispanic, i.e. non-white, immigration, even those, like Sean Hannity, who argue against illegal immigration are always quick to establish their “anti-racist” bona fides by qualifying their position by a gazillion assurances that they are all in favor of legal immigration.  And it doesn’t matter where the immigrants hail from or how many want to come to America, for as long as they do so legally, so goes this line of reasoning, it is just fine.

As some have suggested, the Charlie Hepdo attack is a “teachable moment.”  Let’s hope that Americans generally, and “the conservative movement” in particular, have gleaned the right lessons from it.