BULLETIN:  ATTACK IN PARIS – AT 11:06 A.M. ET:  The early reports are sketchy, and the incident is apparently over, but there has been a hammer attack on a police officer near Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.   It resembles other single-person attacks that have occurred recently in France.  From Fox: 

A man attacked a French police officer with a hammer before being shot outside the famed Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on Tuesday, according to reports.

Paris police wrote on Twitter that there are a "number of police" at the square in front of the cathedral. They urged people to avoid the area. 

The officer defended himself from the attacker by firing his gun twice, police told Fox News. The attacker was reportedly wounded. 

The French U.S. embassy alerted American citizens to "avoid the area and follow advice of authorities" following the incident. 

Large numbers of police cars filled the area on the Ile de Cite island in the River Seine in the center of Paris. The city is under high security after a string of Islamic extremist attacks in recent years.

COMMENT:   We don't have any word on the motivation of the attacker, or whether he acted alone.  There is an assumption among those covering the story that this is an act of Islamist terror, but we caution that this hasn't been confirmed.

Europe has been hit repeatedly over the last few years, and of course we have had several incidents ourselves.   If it turns out that this is another Islamist at work, some will dismiss the attack as the work of a "lone wolf."  There is no such thing as a lone wolf.  Someone doesn't get up one day and decide to launch a terror attack.  So-called "lone wolves" are radicalized by someone, whether online or in person.  And the radicalization is not an accident.

We go through a ritual of defiance after every attack, and within two weeks the attack is forgotten, the dead buried, and the pseudo-intellectuals out in force telling us we just must learn to understand.

June 6, 2017