RUSH: What incredible past six hours or so. Two guys, the two terrorists, the Karachi brothers or whatever their names are, they’re dead now, the hostages are safe. It’s hard to put this in perspective. No, no. It actually is very easy to put it in perspective, but when you put it in proper perspective, you run the risk of being accused of being insensitive.

Stop and think of what’s happened here. Two people, two guys, two terrorists did this. Twelve people are dead, there’s no question. It’s a major, major terror event. But look at how two people brought the world to paralysis. I mean, I’m watching cable news networks here, and they’re all doing their wrap-ups now. By the way, can you believe that we never once saw the Grim Reaper on Fox all week? I didn’t, anyway. If they trotted Geraldo out, I missed him. Geraldo generally shows up when there’s death at the doorstep.

Anyway, the networks are all doing their wrap-up here, and after all the networks went with their British associate, like Fox was televising Sky News, and CNN, well, whoever they could convince to let them simulcast because they knew nobody would watch them, but they were all carrying Brit broadcast. It was being portrayed as, I don’t know, disastrously bad. The hostage circumstances in the two locations in France were being portrayed as just the end of the world, “Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, gee,” and then the guns started firing and the bombs started going, “Oh, no, no, no, no.”

Well, it’s all over. The two terrorists that killed everybody at Charlie Hebdo, the French magazine, are dead. A third culprit is dead, and his girlfriend or wife or whatever is on the lam, but they’ll catch up to her. Now, I just want to share with you the picture, because the picture, that’s what television is. I got here early and I’ve been watching the TV off and on, but it’s been intense, and you know if you’ve been following it yourself. It has been intense, the coverage of the hostage taking and the hostage circumstance. And there have been expert guests and analysts, and everybody has been talking about is this event and placing it among the worst ever of its kind.

So emotions have been ratcheted up. It seemed like there was a general paralysis that had overtaken everybody watching this. There was fear coming out of every orifice and crevice that you could see, and then it was over. I watched a wrap-up — I think it was Fox — and they had the two people, the Karachi brothers, and the other two, the accomplices. The primary terrorists that killed the people at the magazine, they had them on the left. Anyway, a picture of four people. And in the wrap-up they said this is it, the two people on the left you see, they’re now dead. The hostages are non-injured, and they’re all alive. The two people on the right, the far right, also dead. The third person there you see, girlfriend on the lam.

So we had six hours of intense coverage of events following up the murder of 11 or 12 at the magazine, and it all ends with a picture of four people, and three of them are dead. That’s when it struck me, that’s when it hit me that basically two people — I’m not downplaying what they did. I’m referring to media here, I guess, because it all starts with the media and how they cover these things and what impact that has on people.

And when, at the end of the event, you can put up a graphic showing pictures of four people, three of whom are dead, and that means it’s all over for now, on this event, it just for some reason hit me. All of this since Wednesday, all of this paralysis, all of this attention, all of this — (interruption) Oh, Reuters is reporting four hostages at the Paris market are dead? (interruption) Yeah. Yeah. That’s the second location. Okay, there it is, four hostages at Paris market are dead. Well, the last report I saw before the program started were that no hostages had died. So I’m happy to have that correction.

At any rate, it just struck me that two guys did this. Two guys brought everything in the world — well, they didn’t really, but two guys brought the media and what people in this country think is happening in the world to a screeching halt for two days. That’s power. That is incredible power, that two people could bring everything, perception of everything, to a screeching halt. Well, of course it’s fear, but it’s also power.

Now, the reason I say power is because I have been literally amazed ever since yesterday when I probably overdid it, but I made a point to you the New York Times had two stories yesterday. One of them was a palpable fear that all of this would create a backlash against Muslims, against militant Islamists. Well, they are the bad guys. There deserves to be a backlash against these kind of — they deserve to have died today. This is exactly what they deserve.

We shouldn’t be issuing warrants. We shouldn’t be doing indictments. We shouldn’t be going to the grand jury. We shouldn’t be looking forward to the day 10 years from now when we get ’em in a courtroom and try ’em. This is exactly what should happen. And yet the New York Times is worried that this kind of thing is gonna cause a backlash against the people responsible. That was the first story.

The second story was that the primary concern all over Europe and in the elite circles of New York and Washington was this could mean a return to power of extremist fringe right-wing governments. And then from that moment yesterday when I learned that through last night into today, you wouldn’t believe, every media person, every newspaper, every agency followed the New York Times lead. Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, very worried about a backlash against Islamic jihadist. Very worried that this means a reemergence of right-wing governments in European capitals.

None of this is funny, but the degree to which all these people are puppets, and every one of them had the same take, wringing their hands over the same fear. It didn’t seem like I could find a single news agency willing to even mention the name “Islamic terrorism” as part of this story, or “militant jihad,” or “militant Islam,” or “militant Muslim.” No mention. There’s abject fear. That’s why I say these people have an incredible amount of power.

There’s fear in the media to call these people what they are. There’s fear in the media to identify who they are, and what are they afraid of? Are they afraid personally? Are these media people afraid personally, or is there, as there most always is, is there a political explanation for this? I know you might be saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Rush, politics in this?”

Do not discount the possibility. I’m gonna illustrate something here in a moment via audio sound bites to back up what I’m saying, but let’s take a look here. We had a caller yesterday from New Orleans. His name was Matt. He pointed out that the terror attack on the French magazine might be bad PR for the leftist push for political correctness. And, remember, the left lives in the world of buzz and image and perception and PR, and political correctness. Here’s a magazine that wasn’t and look what happened to them.

The caller pointed out that this might be bad PR for the left’s push that everybody be politically correct. The killing at magazines makes political correctness look bad. And he was right. But I think that you could say that these terror attacks make any number of leftists’ positions look bad. For instance, the left is all for ending the war on terrorism. They think it’s counterproductive, they think it’s discriminatory, and they think it’s profiling. You start conducting the War on Terror, then you are besmirching and impugning an entire religion, and this is something we should not do. And that’s where the political correctness rears its head.

Political correctness leads to paralysis. Some in the left even claim we’re not at war with terrorists, and if we are, it’s our fault because we have caused poverty everywhere in the world. Our wealth, our standard of living had not come about legitimately. It’s come because we’ve traveled the world and we have conquered and we have oppressed and we’ve stolen the natural and other resources of other peoples. And, as a result, those people are now in dire poverty, and they are poor, and this leads them to reach out in anger, become terrorists. This is the leftist theory. And therefore we shouldn’t be at war.

We should understand, as Mrs. Clinton said, we need to take time to empathize with our enemies. It’s called smart power. But an event like what’s happened here, this is bad news for the left and their push for appeasement, right? You want to appease these guys? It doesn’t work. This is also bad PR for the left’s push for amnesty and their push for open borders.

You might be saying, “Rush, come on.” We’re talking France. But what’s the problem in France. They have an immigration policy that is essentially open borders, and they haven’t done any assimilating. And the same thing in the UK. And those are things the left believes in very staunchly and are trying to make happen in this country. Open borders, no assimilation. The US needs to be watered down, the US deserves to be watered down.

It’s also bad PR for the left’s push for more gun control laws. This was another laughable thing about yesterday. The left was worried that we need even stricter gun control laws in France. That was one of the big lessons, which is laughable. The cops are unarmed in Paris. The cop that was shot begging for his life was unarmed, only had a billy club. He arrived on the scene on the bicycle. They’re unarmed. So here you’ve got strict gun control laws in Paris. Who’s armed? Bad guys.

And not just armed. Kalashnikovs, AK-47s, military style weapons, bad PR for the left that preaches gun control is the answer to everything, because it looked like the bad guys, after demilitarizing — we’re hearing that in America now. “We must demilitarize the police. The police running around looking like a division of the US Army, why, that’s intimidating to the community, and we can’t have that. It’s causing violence. It’s causing strife. We’ve got to demilitarize the police.” Which means take away some powerful weapons that could overcome bad guys.

Well, France has already done this. Not only did they demilitarize the police, they disarm the police. And the left got everything they wanted in gun control in France, and look what happened. Bad PR. Except the media’s talking about none of this. The media is literally paralyzed in fear. These two guys have scared them to death. They’re literally paralyzed in fear. And they really believe the way to deal with that fear is to not make enemies of these guys, just let ’em know, “Hey, we’re not gonna criticize you. We’re not even gonna properly identify you. Don’t come for us. We love you. At least we don’t hate you.” That’s their appeasement. That’s how they choose to deal with this.

But everything the left touts as the answer to problems is on display as a giant failure in Paris. Political correctness, gun control, demilitarizing or disarming the cops, open borders, amnesty, everything the left believes in on parade. And that’s why they’re not talking about it. That’s why their big concern is a backlash against militant Islamists and, of course, the rise to power of fringe conservative governance. By the way, here’s a quote for you very quickly. Little pop quiz. Who said this: “We don’t need these fringe guys as much as we did anymore.” Think about that.