JONAH GOLDBERG: Speak Power To Narrative: ‘Charlie Hebdo’ critics bend or ignore the reality of facts when facts challenge story lines.

This obsession with the idea that the heinous acts of the “powerless” are somehow justified runs through vast swaths of literary and journalistic cultures. (How many commentators rush to defend rioters on account of their sense of “powerlessness”?)

Many journalists recite Finley Peter Dunne’s credo that the press must “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” as if it is their 11th commandment. The mantra of countless intellectuals is that they must “speak truth to power.”

The problem is that they define the powerful and powerless based upon their own preferred narratives. When the truth interferes with the narrative, the truth must be bent or jettisoned.

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat notes that while it is true “power flows from pre-existing privilege, it also grows from the barrel of a gun, and the willingness to deal out violence changes power dynamics.” Terrorists may rationalize their violence in terms that make Western intellectuals swoon, but that doesn’t mean they are powerless. They have enormous power — because they have the ability and the will to use violence to kill.

Meanwhile, Trudeau and the PEN dissidents have a very funny definition of courage. Trudeau has won awards and wealth by taking at best droll and more often clichéd potshots at Republicans at no personal risk to himself whatsoever. But he thinks it is cowardly to openly defy those who are eager to murder the mockers.

Yeah, he’s a putz.