By savagely attacking and murdering writers and cartoonists as well as Jewish shoppers, French Islamists clarified something that many in the West have deceived themselves about: that the war we are engaged in is a war of ideas. Islamists have once again reminded us that freedom itself is their target.

This discomfits the left. They prefer to pretend that Islamist violence (when they acknowledge it at all) springs from unemployment, poverty or, most frequently, colonial oppression. Most leftists, and some on the libertarian right, believe that American responses to Islamists’ attacks — ranging from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to NSA wiretapping — are the causes of the murderous rage that has claimed thousands of victims on every continent (10,000 in 2013 alone) and has in the past three months plunged Australia, Canada, Israel, Pakistan and now France into agonies as civilians (including children) have been coldly massacred in the name of Allah.