The Scots and the Terrorist: He That Pities the Brute

Commentator Thomas Sowell does a great job in his column this week unpacking the misguided and dangerous thinking behind the Scottish government's foolish and immoral decision to release Abdel Baset al-Megrahi -- the Libyan terrorist whose bomb sent 270 innocent people to their horrific deaths over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.

Sowell quotes philosopher/economist Adam Smith: "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."

Like many a profound truth, this one has been articulated by more than one great thinker. One insight I recall from my abbreviated Sunday school career was spoken by a Jewish sage: "He that pities the brute is a brute to those deserving pity." The Torah also says, "In the eyes of a righteous man, a vile person is despised."

In today's world of moral relativism, the imperative to forgive at all costs is viewed as an automatic virtue -- at least in polite company. But the people doing the forgiving (and in this case, the freeing) on behalf of the rest of us seem more likely to choose, as beneficiaries of their benevolence, those who commit acts of abject, irrevocable evil than lesser offenders. For instance, there have been rumors that Bernard Madoff, perpetrator of history's largest investment fraud, may be dying of cancer. If such rumors turn out to be true, will anyone dare to suggest Madoff be allowed to die at home by the side of his wife Ruth? I doubt it. Ask most people, and they will vehemently insist Bernard Madoff is pure evil, an unrepentant sociopath. Perhaps he is. But Madoff robbed people of their money, not of their lives.

Whereas al-Megrahi plotted the murder of 270 innocent people and robbed them, and their families, of those lives forever.

It seems pity is all too often reserved for people who commit acts of absolute, irrevocable evil. The worse the offense, the more automatic must be the mercy towards the perpetrator. Perhaps the logic is that acts of unmitigated evil are so difficult to comprehend, their perpetrators must be insane, and therefore deserving of pity. Even if there is some grain of psychological truth in this formulation (and I'm not convinced there is), how is it a sound basis for making policy or legal decisions? What sort of message does this bizarre reasoning send to those contemplating evil acts? What sort of harm does it do to the innocent families of the innocent victims?

Yesterday British newspapers reported some background suggesting the Scottish government's decision may have had more to do with coin than compassion: Lord Trefgarne, a senior member of Britain's House of Lords, wrote to Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill in July "to say the bomber's fate was of 'grave concern' to a lobbying group he chairs, the Libyan British Business Council. The council includes petroleum giants like Shell and BP," according to the New York Post.

So in some cases, the motives behind all this forgiveness are probably just old-fashioned corruption.

The sage and the philosopher of yore saw clearly what befuddles our modern social engineers.

Pitying brutes tends to backfire. And it is the innocent who pay the price.

Heather Robinson also blogs at www.heatherrobinson.net.

Comments

[marylinpitz]

It is amazing that a someone can twist any circumstances and come up with the statement, "either you believe in compassion or you don't," and thereby forgive any atrocity ever committed. Imagine how that might please Pol Pot, Adolph Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer---let alone Abdel Baset al-Megrahi.
Hard to imagine what it must feel like to those indulging in the exercize of this sort of "forgivene­ss"---bein­g God, after all! Wow! Marylin Pitz

[abql]

Great clarity from Robinson and Sowell - unfortunately both sides of the pond have been full of anti-everyone except Libya and let's all go back to Viet Nam and count our errors. There's nothing progressive about stupidity - ignoring the international impact (in blatant violation of the terms of devolution) of creating a hero and martyr while we are ostensibly allies and at war is lunacy. Ghaddafi is supposed to be coming hat in hand to rejoin the international community. Instead, Salmond, Macaskill, Brown, and Mandelson, have handed him his greatest victory - nice company for the celebration with Mugable and the Sudanese cheering him on! This is 2009, Megrahi was a Libyan Secret Service agent, even the squishy old Left acquiesces to that fact. The most common excuse applauding the lunacy of the Scots "Justice" Minister has been that Megrahi's convictions were invalid - so, the Scots have no faith in their own system, the Brits wanted BP in Libya and the rest of the world has watched the saltire defamed irrevocably, all done by one Scots Minister cocking a snook at his soldiers allies. God forbid there's any Scotsmen looking for Bin Laden, maybe they can book him a room at Gleneagles.

[Statsboy196]

As Bart Simpson would say, "Ahh. The system works." So Big Oil got this guy free? Cool! What Big Oil wants, Big Oil gets. Everyone has a price, but others, say Big Solar or Big Wind or Big Switchgrass, can't afford to buy such favours yet.

Anybody ever heard of leading by example? That's the price of our civil society: we let the bad guys live... in dank, dark prison cells. But now that the world economy's going completely down the toilet, maybe house arrest will make a comeback.

But we all know whose fault this REALLY is: Bill Clinton. Sixteen years of Bill Clinton and he couldn't do anything to stop this evil terrorist! ...okay, so it happened on Reagan's watch, but that's beside the point! Where was I? Ooh, look! New photos of Jessica Alba! I gotta run.

[dSquib]

Well, setting aside that the conviction of Megrahi has been highly dubious and will likely be disproven by documents coming into the public domain...

As a convention of Scots law, any prisoner who is deemed to have less than 3 months to live (apparently he just went into intensive care so his prognosis was even a little conservative) can apply for compassionate release. They are quite frequent, but not all are accepted. Political considerations should be kept out of the law. Yes, that means releasing someone even if it causes a ridiculous brouhaha on both sides of the Atlantic.

Moreover, the sheer audacity of Thomas Sowell to write that piece, wherein he calls for no accountability for people in the previous administration to face justice for crimes they committed, is just too much. And you yourself dare to decry today's moral relativism? The notion that wrongdoing can only be done against the innocent is PURE relativism. You either believe in compassion, or you don't. It is you and Sowell who would sell us all out to the terrorists, not those who refuse to be drawn to their level.