A must-read …

… "René Girard never played the Great Man," says biographer.

A week after René’s death, France suffered the greatest attack on its soil since World War II. René’s Palo Alto Requiem Mass took place on a day of national mourning in France – how strange and apt for the man who wrote so much about violence. So often René was saying what we did not want to hear. Already the silence is beginning to settle like snow around the Paris atrocity. We find we can get used to just about anything. René said we are facing a whole new phenomenon, and that what we are watching with Islamic terrorism is in fact a new religion, an archaic one armed with modern technology.