“Maybe when we face a tragedy,” wrote Kamand Kojouri, “someone, somewhere is preventing a bigger tragedy from happening.”  We recently saw an inspiring example of this hope on a bloodied street in Birstall, England.  It served as a powerful reminder that merely observing a world in turmoil will never save it.Jo Cox was only 41, but a rising star in Britain's political life.  Her background, like few others, qualified this redoubtable woman for a life of public service.  She spent a decade working for the international aid agency Oxfam, and just prior to being elected worked at the anti-slavery organization Freedom Fund and for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  Like many activist MPs, Cox came to believe that her best hope of creating a better world lay in Parliament and fighting to change or enact legislation.Just outside her constituency office she was gunned down and repeatedly stabbed by a solitary man reportedly suffering from a mental illness.  The slaying was brutal.  Yet as the gunman was reloading, a group of bystanders prevented him from rearming and likely killing others.  Their actions fulfilled Kojouri's insight – courage preventing one tragedy from creating others.For any politician the news of the demise of Jo Cox serves as a powerful reminder of the risks of public service in the age of social media and tolerated hatred.  She had been the object of three months of visceral online attacks related to her entreaties that Britons stay within the European Union (her killer screamed “Britain first, Britain first” as he shot her).  The online attacks had raised obvious concerns for her staff and family.  Requests for extra security were denied, although, as a result of a stream of particularly vicious online attacks, the police had determined to provide extra security in the coming weeks.A lasting part of this tragedy is that such protections would have arrived too late.  People didn't take seriously enough the darker intentions of the haters, just as they didn't in Orlando, Florida, prior to the senseless of deaths of singer Christina Grimmie and the 49 who perished at the Pulse nightclub.Both nations are attempting to deal with a world where hatred in the digital domain can reach out and introduce violence in our communities.  These darker influences – trolls, stalkers, anonymous hackers, pursuers – intentionally single out individuals and groups, especially those in some kind of authority.  The tolerance extended towards such verbal vigilantism has now left enough physical carnage in its wake that people are demanding a more effective kind of vigilance.  It begs the question if our present pliable laws on free speech are capable of providing that kind of security any healthy society requires for a meaningful life – collectively and individually.An active life on social media has now becoming a necessity for any politician seeking to remain relevant in a changing age, just as a productive relationship with traditional media had served the political interest in the past.  But social media venues hardly carry the editorial filters of more established media – a world where everyone can become a target.We're not talking about ISIS here, but our own progressive societies – what we permit and how we tolerate it.  Hatred isn't just some kind of foreign threat but a domestic reality, and the longer we take to come to terms with its implications, the more dangerous our society will become.  It is getting harder and harder to deny this pattern.It is not enough to demand government action following the happenings of Orlando and Birstall.  Citizens must raise their game and oversee those very venues that are expanding the horizons of free speech.  Brendan Cox, the husband of Jo Cox, set the tone in his remarks immediately following her death:“Today is the beginning of a new chapter in our lives.  More difficult, more painful, less joyful, less full of love.  I and Jo's friends and family are going to work every moment of our lives to love and nurture our kids and to fight against the hate that killed Jo.  Jo believed in a better world and she fought for it every day of her life.  She would have wanted … that we all unite to fight against the hatred that killed her.”Are we ready for that, as citizens and our respective governments?Communities have woken up around the world to discover that the verbal attacks against citizens, especially vulnerable women, have resulted in local suicides, sexual assaults, and murder.  As such incidents increase, will we remain guilty of Jay Asher's observation: “A lot of you cared, just not enough”?Sadly, the political world has lost a valiant voice in the death of Jo Cox.  We can't claim, along with Patrick Rothfuss in The Wise Man's Fear, that, “It's not over if you're still here.  It's not a tragedy if you're still alive.”  She is gone and we must deal with the tragedy, as with those in Orlando and elsewhere.  How we accomplish that will determine our capacity as citizens and the future security of our children.Glen Pearson was a career professional firefighter and is a former Member of Parliament from southwestern Ontario.  He and his wife adopted three children from South Sudan and reside in London, Ontario.  He has been the co-director of the London Food Bank for 29 years.  He writes regularly for the London Free Press and also shares his views on a blog entitled “The Parallel Parliament“.   Follow him on twitter @GlenPearson.