Je Suis Charlie

 

Je Suis Parisien

We remember and honor the 12 lives lost today in the beautiful city of Paris. They stood boldly in defense of a vital, uncompromisable principle and a foundation of freedom, against the madness and irrationality of fundamentalism. If we relinquish the right to question, critique and satirize the absolutism and authority of faith and religion, or government and industry for that matter, we surrender free and open expression of thought and our humanity, and the needed and beneficial actions and behaviors that so often follow.  We must not allow fundamentalism to replace freedom, nor fear to usurp liberty.

Anyone who has ever written or spoken a public word is indebted. 

"The values that we share with the French people, a universal belief in freedom of expression is something that won't be silenced because of senseless violence" - President Barack Obama

"Find the cost of freedom buried in the ground.

Mother earth will swallow you, lay your body down."