Lockerbie

This article by Dennis Prager points out the absolute moral backwardness of the recent decision to release the Lockerbie bomber on humanitarian grounds.

If a serial killer murdered 270 people, would judges still think releasing him to die at home is the humane thing to do? Or does that principle only apply to politically-motivated terrorists?

Some highlights of the article are below. Also, if you've never read the details of the Lockerbie attack, I highly recommend reading this so you can fully grasp the inhumanity of this man's actions.

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The Scottish government released Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the one person convicted in the mass murder of 270 people when Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988.

As the Chicago Tribune noted in an editorial appropriately titled "Scotland's Shame," at al-Megrahi's 2001 trial, the Scottish prosecutor pointed out that "four hundred parents lost a child, 46 parents lost their only child, 65 women were widowed, 11 men lost their wives, 140 lost a parent, seven lost both parents."

But all these people and all their loved ones were not the recipients of Scotland's compassion; the murderer was.

What the Scottish government, its Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, and millions of others in the West do not understand is that, unlike justice, compassion cannot be given to everyone. If you show compassion to person X or group X, you cannot show it to person Y or group Y. Justice, by definition, is universal. Compassion, by definition, is selective.

That is why, generally speaking, governments should be in the business of dispensing justice, not compassion. Individuals can, and often ought to, dispense compassion, not societies.

When governments try to dispense compassion, they usually end up hurting people, as in the case of Scotland.