Acontinent that not so long ago thought its modernity eternally secure now finds precious liberties under siege. In France, the attack by Islamist extremists on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo marked an assault on the pivotal Enlightenment value of freedom of expression. Elsewhere — most recently in Germany — Islamophobic extremists are challenging the tolerance on which Europe has built its peace. This is an unholy alliance against democracy.
The response to the killings in Paris was heartening. Leaders found the right words. François Hollande looked uncommonly presidential as he said that France had been attacked because it was a nation of freedom. Chancellor Angela Merkel, who seems to have been making the important connections between the various threats to Europe’s democratic order, talked of an assault on the “values we all hold dear”. Days earlier she had called on her compatriots to boycott the swelling protests in some German cities orchestrated by the self-styled Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West.
The crowds pouring into the squares and streets of Paris holding aloft Je Suis Charlie placards, and the vigils in cities across Europe, were a reminder that, for all their disenchantment with ruling elites, people will not lightly surrender their liberties. From time to time you hear it said that we are living in an age when authoritarianism will flourish at the expense of democracy. I am not so sure that freedom and human dignity will be so easily given up. As Mr Hollande said, liberty will always be stronger than barbarism.