This is the day after 24 hours of national shock. Canadians are wondering what has become of their freedom to trust that our security forces at every level of government and our national leaders are aware of any potential threats to our reason to continue trusting. Events sometimes move beyond the  apparent control of all cautionary measures to protect society.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle   Police investigators carry equipment at the National War Memorial after a shooting in Ottawa on Wednesday, October 22, 2014. 

 

Perhaps it's the threats from without that lull us to the understanding that our complacency has been penetrated from within by outside sources determined to wreak havoc in liberal democracies by their assaults on our values, deriding them as decadently corrupt, and celebrating their own nihilistic, totalitarian ambitions as the only values worth preserving.

To that end they mount violent atrocities whose results horrify and instill fear in their victims, their reputation for inhumane infliction of death and destruction afflicting not only their own communities but those geographically distant.

The infiltration into democratic societies by migrants from far-off failed states whose agenda is to spread the dysfunctional belief in the superiority and inevitable conquest of the West by the malign forces of fanatical Islam has created a world wide web of intrigue and Byzantine operations to use the West's own heritage values of justice and equality to exist on the fringes of lawful operations while they spread their violent ideology.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld    Prime Minister Stephen Harper shakes hands with as Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers in the House of Commons on Thursday October 23, 2014 in Ottawa. The House of Commons is back in action, kicked off by an exhilarating show of support for the sergeant-at-arms of the House of Commons, who was among those who opened fire Wednesday on the gunman who stormed Parliament Hill. 

 

That the government of an advanced Liberal society celebrating its immigrant heritage and its ability to absorb people from all over the world as Canadian citizens in a pluralistic society based on equality, liberty and trust, could be taken hostage, by someone subscribing to the odiously violent and dangerous belief in a universal conquest by Islamists, its Parliamentarians' lives threatened, is beyond belief. But this is just what happened yesterday in Ottawa.

In this era, the two-pronged approach of infiltration of societies is aided hugely by the advent of social media whose Internet communications ease of use and wide spread contacts makes recruiting men and women attracted to the prospect of becoming agents of fear and aggression readily leads to enticing them to mount their own attacks as virulently-hateful 'lone-wolf' jihadis.

Pat McGrath / Postmedia News   A memorial of flowers and a Canadian flag and a cap at the Cenotaph. Police remain on the scene Oct 23 at the Cenotaph where a soldier was shot dead Oct 22. The gunman was later killed when he stalked the halls of Parliament Hill.

And this is just what Canada has been exposed to in the last week when on Monday a so-called radicalized Muslim convert fatally ran down with his vehicle a member of the Canadian Military in Quebec, and two days later another similar convert to Islamist jihad wrought havoc by shooting a rifle point-blank at a Canadian military reservist standing guard at the National Cenotaph, then consolidating his credentials further by striding into the Centre Block of the Parliament buildings, creating chaos and panic as security personnel responded and the entire centre of the downtown area was in lockdown for the remainder of the day until it was finally determined this was another lone deranged jihad-infected psychopath.

The question that remains is how many of these religion-deranged lunatics are out there? And what will be done about their presence?