French President François Hollande vowed to conduct a “pitiless” war against the people responsible for Friday’s atrocities, and over the weekend, the bombings of ISIS targets in Syria began. Le président also temporarily closed all of France’s borders, but only for those seeking to leave the locked-down country. Frankly, these moves do not go far enough, but they’re a step in the right direction. Even a socialist like Monsieur Hollande appears to recognize that tight border security and strict immigration politics at home, coupled with a swift and brutal anti-Islamist foreign policy, are the only viable options left for Europe and North America.

At the sake of sounding like Conan the Barbarian (“Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.”), what we all need is a big time resurrection of the ancient virtues. Robert E. Howard, the hardboiled Texan who created Conan, famously said that, “barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.”