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Someone who beheads infidels on camera is clearly instrumentally rational, having formed and carried out a clear plan with specified objectives whose essential failing is moral not practical. Terrorism, like genocide, can “work” and yet be completely wrong.

Evidently determined to pile Pelion on Ossa when it comes to clichés, the Toronto mayor also called the attack cowardly. But slaughtering innocents takes strong nerves. Seriously, would we be safer if terrorists or psychos were braver? It’s just trite babble.

So is the predictable academic expert saying thank goodness it wasn’t an “assault” weapon, a cosmetic category and implied sneer at Americans’ unwillingness to ban big bad rifles. In fact per capita mass public shootings are worse in many places than the U.S., including some European countries with strict gun control.

More fundamentally, in novelist Andrew Lytle’s words, “The great puritan heresy puts evil in the object, in a deck of cards, in a woman’s hair, in dancing, in that great invention whiskey … Evil cannot be in the object. It must be in the mind and heart … ”

Arguably it takes less courage to shoot unarmed civilians than, say, storm a military base or police station. But the problem isn’t cowardice. If anything it’s the opposite, a peculiar and brittle hubris about your own righteousness that gives you the gall to set aside other lives as worthless.

What we are dealing with here is evil. It takes many forms, from political ideology to personal resentment. But it is by dwelling on evil thoughts, making the circles they run in within our minds ever deeper and smoother, that we take ourselves into the realm of evil actions. So if we’re going to cope with evil, we need the courage to call it by name.

Even if we do, and find some practical solutions to individual outbreaks of violence, life will remain fragile. We cannot banish accident, disease or malice, including misfortunes that do not kill or cripple our bodies but do maim our spirits.

So have we, today, cherished one another and all the moments we are given? There is the big question every tragedy or outrage poses.