Compassion, Justice, and Scotland's Release of the Lockerbie Terrorist

One story that might have been lost in your shuffle (not iPod) this past week came from Scotland and involved the release of a terrorist responsible for the murder of 270 people 21 years ago. Here is a re-cap of the events surrounding the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 for those too young to remember them.

Dennis Prager, as only Dennis can, explains why the Scottish government's decision to release the convicted killer because he is terminally ill with cancer is a shameful chapter in a proud nation's storied history.

An excerpt:

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.