#France’s Macron stands tall for free speech and civilization

France is under attack by “Islamist and terrorist madness,” President Emmanuel Macron warned after the country saw yet another terror attack — two men knifed to death and one woman beheaded in a Nice cathedral. Worse, the savages have support in much of the Muslim world.

Thursday’s horror follows a Chechen teen’s beheading two weeks ago of a teacher who had shown his class pictures of the famous Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed.

Publication of the ’toons was the excuse for the 2015 slaughter of most the magazine’s staff. Various “lone wolf” jihadists have killed over 250 people in France since then. The country’s never officially gone off high alert.

Macron appeared at a memorial service for the slain teacher to reaffirm his citizens’ right to free speech. And he refused to denounce the cartoons, vowing instead to fight “Islamist separatism.” His government proceeded to raid Islamic associations and plans to deport 213 foreigners on a government watchlist.

In response, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are boycotting French products. Libya, Pakistan and Iraq have seen protests. Turkey’s dictator insists Macron needs “mental treatment,” while a past leader of Malaysia insists Muslims are right to “kill millions of French people.”

Macron’s crackdown may go beyond what’s constitutional in America, but it fits the French Republic’s relentless secularism.

And he’s absolutely right to stand up for France’s traditional freedoms — and to tell his critics in the Muslim world to go hang.