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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
August 23, 2009
Grave injustice
That there is justice to be had in this world, I cannot doubt. But more and more we must look for it from nature, because it will not be available through our legal systems. I write from much firsthand experience, into which I will not and should not go, simply because it is firsthand and personal.And because the phenomenon to which I refer is not ultimately particular and local, but civilizational. One must put up a fight where one can, for arbitrary injustice is something that we must, in justice, oppose. It is especially important to stand up for other victims of judicial miscarriage, whenever some good can be achieved by doing so. But practically, we must realize that by abandoning the explicitly Christian moral and spiritual foundations of western society, our "betters" have turned western concepts of justice upside down. Consider, if my reader has the heart, a Scottish judicial decision this past week, permitting Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, former Libyan intelligence agent, to return home on compassionate grounds after serving eight years of a 27-year minimum sentence. Rather than speak for myself, let me quote instead the winged words of a friend who is a former soldier: "I just heard Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill explain his reasons for releasing one of the Lockerbie bombers. If 11 of my citizens had died on the ground (along with 259 other nationals), and my prisoner hadn't coughed up the name of his boss who gave the order, I could not be compassionate. My prisoner would die alone in a faraway land like so many of our great citizens have done before and do today. "That makes me Old Testament," he supposes. The use of the very term "compassionate" in the Scottish decision is two-edged. While it does, indeed, spit on the graves of the bomber's victims, and in the faces of their survivors, it simultaneously infers that by refusing "compassion" opponents of the decision are unjust. Here we enter into the insanity of "moral relativism" and "moral equivalence" -- recently on exhibit in tears shed ignominiously for the inmates of Guantanamo. We reveal, almost everywhere that compassion is invoked, the fact that we no longer have a viable conception of justice. For in the conception we once had, "compassion" had no part. The operative term was "mercy," and the idea behind it was radically different from the idea behind compassion. While I am fairly sure that "compassion" has an important place in a Hindu or Buddhist moral order -- and a place there I will not lightly dismiss -- I am also fairly sure it does not have a place in the ancient Hebrew, or Greek moral orders, or in any that can be plausibly presented as Christian. (All learned arguments to the contrary to be patiently considered.) Mercy has tempered justice, in our western tradition. Note that construction: mercy is not a part of justice, it is "another thing." There are circumstances in which justice may allow us to be merciful, but "compassion" would not be one of them. If the man is ill, we might be so merciful as to treat him, on the argument that no additional physical suffering was part of his sentence. Compassion is not something restricted to humans. It exists, most certainly, among many of the animals in the world of nature (a point I touched upon recently in this space). Such Buddhist texts as I have read and pondered suggest that it is a quality of intellection: that, to the extent one is dealing with a "higher" animal, one is dealing with a mind that is capable of grasping the independent existence, and therefore the potential interests, of "the other." Paradoxically, this means we should look for compassion more in crows and ravens; owls and eagles; monkeys and apes; dolphins, whales, and octopodes. They "reason" in light of the existence of the other, and even if that other should be their prey, they show an intelligent concern to keep it in the dark about its fate, and to despatch it efficiently. There are also forms of "kindliness" on exhibit in nature, at the higher end of this compassion. A good Buddhist aspires to the highest possible benignity towards his fellow creatures, human and the higher inhuman. The Jains take this further. And this is all very interesting if our subject is comparative religion. But today it is "justice," which, in our civilization, was known to be something sharp and hard. Justice is necessary to rectify injustice. The man who intentionally kills many unknown to him, in order to make a political statement, has committed a grave act of injustice, for which an equal and opposite act of justice is required. Justice, not retribution: for a desire for revenge should no more come into a just judgment, than a desire for compassion. The punishment "should fit the crime." That is for judge and jury to determine. Eight years for the murder of hundreds does not fit the crime. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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