After the attacks on Charlie Hebdo—Je Suis Charlie—the Socialist leadership in France has wholeheartedly accepted the challenge that it must fight against Islamic terror “as a matter essential to French national identity…” As Kenneth R. Weinstein, president and CEO of Hudson Institute, writes in the WSJ, the struggle is for “the principles of the Enlightenment and tolerance against reactionary fanaticism.”

Today, France’s most popular politician on the left is Prime Minister Manual Valls, who has rallied his country around the hallmarks of the Third Republic—civic assimilation, secularism and patriotism. Rejecting the charge of Islamophobia, Mr. Valls argues that France is fighting a “war with terrorism, jihadism, and radical Islam.”

In stark contrast is President Obama’s denial that the self-proclaimed Islamic State is in fact “Islamic.” In fact, Mr. Obama refuses to call ISIS “radical Islam.” Instead, he uses the term “violent extremism.” But as Mr. Weinstein points out, as long as the leadership in the U.S. is in denial over what ISIS is, “Discussion and debate, and the soul-searching that comes with those important endeavors, are stymied.”

Read more here from Mr. Weinstein, who writes, “To place political correctness above the defense of liberal values is to cede our societies and their Muslim members to extremist ideas.”