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The news from Paris was horrifying, and deserved a break in the usual round of commentary, but surely nobody who has been paying attention was completely shocked. We know that there are jihadists out there, and even the best efforts at prevention will fail sometimes. We’ll have to see how this fairly elaborate plot went undetected, but really nothing about the story so far suggests that it should fundamentally change how we see the world.

We also knew that the usual suspects would react badly — but there, I think, there has been a surprise on the downside. As far as I can tell, nobody in the GOP field wants to say anything positive about the strength of Western democracy, or make a remark about the nature of a cause that has nothing going for it except the ability to kill innocent civilians. Instead, we have Jeb! insisting that we’re looking at a plan to destroy Western civilization, and Ted Cruz declaring that what we need to do is abandon our own scruples about killing innocent bystanders. Seize the moral high ground!

Meanwhile, the Democrats had a bizarrely rational and well-informed debate. By today’s standards, that’s positively un-American.