On Christmas Eve, I watched on TV a bit of the Mass at St. Peter’s in Rome – and there is nothing quite as impressive as St. Peter’s Basilica. Say what you will about the Catholic Church, St. Peter’s is clearly the product of a highly advanced and refined civilization.

As I watched, a little distracted by the English translation (I wish they hadn’t bothered…certainly no Catholic needed to know what was going on; we know, no matter what language) it occurred to me that St. Peter’s was probably heavily locked down by security and all sorts of screening and barriers were around and within the Church…all to prevent a savage from carrying out a horrific act. And then it really hit me:

In the very heart of our civilization, we are not safe.

Think about what we have around us, every day, grating against normality. A prominent lady on Twitter, the daughter of immigrants, related the other day her tale of woe in getting the new driver’s license. All the extra documentation she needed to obtain and provide so that she, an American, could prove to her own government that she was, indeed, a citizen of the Republic and so should be allowed to enter federal buildings. And even if she got that ID, she’d still need to take off her belt and shoes and run them and her purse through a scanner while she, herself, was quickly x-rayed on the way in. And let’s pause for a moment and think about those round, concrete bollards which have sprouted like mushrooms in front of all sorts of buildings and places…barriers against a barbarian driving a car or truck into us.

We are imprisoning ourselves – caging our own people, while barbarians roam free.

This is wrong. This is terrible. This is not how civilized people are supposed to live. It is the barbarians who should be running and hiding from us…not we erecting anti-terrorism barriers in front of our buildings, parks and places of worship. And it is becoming so ubiquitous that even us older folks aren’t noticing it – but worse than that, the youngsters are growing up thinking that it is normal to have such things. That to live you have barriers and machine guns and tanks and, with all that, the barbarians will get through from time to time and carry out a massacre.

No. No. No. That is not what should be.

Qassim Soleimani was a very dapper man – in uniform or mufti, he was always carefully groomed and well turned out. But make no mistake about it, he was a barbarian. Doubly so because he deliberately became one, rejecting the 4,000 year old civilization he was born into. He was not, be sure of it, the only person in the world organizing and funding barbarism…but he was one of the main ones. When Trump ordered him killed, a peculiar bit of satisfaction came over me…the purveyor of blood finally paid in blood for what he did. I’ve been saying for years that Islamism is a con. As much of a con as Nazism or Communism is or ever was. It is a grift; a justification for a mafia-like entity to batten itself upon a nation and suck its blood. Not for the leaders of Islamism is strapping on a bomb and blowing up a marketplace – nope; they convince others (or force via threats to families, if needed) to do that. Because it really is just a con: what they say and do merely justifies their barbarism…and allows them what they, and all barbarians, really want: to live fat on the carcass of civilization…making nothing and doing nothing of merit, but having the luxuries of life in gross.

Trump struck a hard blow against barbarism – and promises more of the same if the Iranian leadership doesn’t cool it. But to me, that isn’t quite enough. We need to forcefully let everyone know that civilization wins. That we will punish those who seek to kill and destroy as a means of garnering unearned wealth and power. For decades we’ve allowed the barbarians to push us back to the point where we’re bunkered into our churches and government offices…now is the time to start the counter-attack.

And I can’t think of a better way than painting a target on the backs of the barbarian leaders. Let them know that if they orchestrate savagery, we’re coming after them – that they will die; that they will no longer live well while others die. Do it often enough, and they will change their tune because all those who seek to live well off others primarily want to live. They are brutes, to be sure, but also cowards of the lowest sort. Mere amoral appetite…and the thing that terrifies them the most is losing wealth and life.