There’s an age old quote often attributed to Mark Twain that says “better to be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.” Unfortunately, John Kerry’s role as Secretary of State compels him to speak publicly on behalf of the United States, and he’s spent the last several months sweeping up those last few grains of skepticism about his intellectual limits. As Jonah Bennett at the Daily Caller notes:
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry remarked Tuesday that the attacks on Charlie Hebdo are much more understandable and have a better rationale than the Friday Paris attacks.
Kerry flew to France following the G20 talks in Turkey and delivered remarks at the U.S. embassy on the Paris attacks, which left 129 dead, CBS News reports.
“There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that,” Kerry said. “There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of – not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, ‘Okay, they’re really angry because of this and that.’ This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate.”
Kerry’s response is rife with the moral relativism and unseriousness that underlies modern liberalism. It’s an incoherent view that is both condescending and generous. “In our Western society, we abhor violent retaliation for speech, but we understand if that’s not how you do things in the Islamic world, and we’re sorry if our insensitivity to your cultural preferences offends you.” As Charles Cooke at the National Review put it:
Implicit in Kerry’s reasoning is the assumption that the perpetrators of the attacks against Charlie Hebdo had a clear purpose whereas the perpetrators of last week’s abomination did not. Or, as he put it, that in one case the killers were “really angry because of this and that,” but that in the other they were not. But this isn’t true. In fact, both set of attackers gave reasons. With Charlie Hebdo, the killers’ purported motive was revenge against ”blasphemous” expression; in Paris last week, it was disgust at Paris’s reputation for “obscenity.” In consequence, there are only two choices here: Option 1) That John Kerry believes that killing people for speaking rudely is more understandable than killing them for being secular; or Option 2) That John Kerry doesn’t actually know what the most recent attackers used as their justification (and also doesn’t remember that at the same time as the Charlie Hebdo assassinations, associated gunmen targeted a market simply because its owners were Jews).
Although Kerry’s logic is muddled, one thing is quite clear: this is an unserious man who is completely unfit to be America’s Secretary of State.
AAN Staff
The staff at American Action News are consummate professionals, who when not producing original, hard-hitting content, are scouring the internet to bring you the unfiltered news that matters to you! Our mission is to maximize your experience on our website. If we can ever be of assistance, please do not hesitate to let us know!
