A short while ago, two explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon took the lives of at least two persons and injured dozens. We do not yet know who was responsible for the crime or how exactly it was perpetrated, but as of the moment of this writing, it is believed that homemade bombs were the cause.

It is to be hoped that all those who write on public affairs will refrain from jumping to conclusions about what happened until we have some definitive information. Until that happens, let’s take a moment to pray for the families of the dead and for the recovery of the wounded.

It should also be a moment to remember that whomever it was that did this and whatever motivation they might have had, we live in an age of terrorism. There is a tendency, as the memory of each terror attack fades, to drop back into an attitude of complacence and to treat these incidents as outside the norm and to lower both our vigilance about terror and to stop prioritizing counter-terrorist efforts. That should not happen again.