Posted by
Steve on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 11:26:28 AM
The Israeli’s made a trade for one of their soldiers who has been a prisoner of the Palestinians for the past five years. They traded 1027 Palestinian terrorists for the one Israeli soldier. On the surface it seems a bad trade. You trade over 1000 people who want to kill you for one of your people. But, that one person has value to your society and so you make the trade. It is the right thing to do, even if it puts the overall society in jeopardy.
I am reminded of a John Wayne movie where he was captured by the bad guys. Robert Mitchum had said he would never release the bad guy’s leader. But, he did so when offered his best friend, John Wayne, in trade. That was the right thing to do there, even though it meant breaking his word. In the movie, everything worked out well in the end. But that is the movies. In the case of this Israeli trade, the finish has not been written.
The value of an individual is paramount. What could that individual give to society is unknown at the present time. Only looking back can we judge the value of a human life and whether a trade like the Israeli’s made was the correct one? Looking forward, you have to base your judgment on whether that person or life has any value. To any Judeo/Christian society, every human life has value and should be protected at all costs. To socialist societies, a single human can be sacrificed because it is the common good that matters, not what is best for any individual.
Looking at other related issues, you can see this play out time and again. In abortion, those of us who value individual rights are pro-life. Those who value collective rights are pro-abortion. If you believe in individual rights you have to put the value on the individual. So, anything that interferes with the individual’s rights is bad. Anything that enhances an individual’s rights is good. To a socialist type, collective rights are paramount. Collective rights are like a cattle rancher. He will sacrifice the individual cow for the overall herd. The collective rights person will sacrifice the individual in an abortion, for the collective good. The individual takes second place in a collectivist society.
We are having a debate in America right now. One side is preaching individual rights and responsibility. The other side is preaching collective rights and no individual responsibility. To the uneducated, there seems to be little difference between the two. But, in practice there is a huge difference in the way the two sides implement their ideas. The one who believes in individual rights sets a high value there. Anything that interferes with the individual rights has to be weighed carefully. Someone that believes in individual rights will generally want smaller government and less control over what a person says and does. The collectivist wants maximum government control over every aspect of a person’s life. The reason they want the government to control everything is that they cannot trust people to make decisions that they think should be made. So, you get the government to limit the possible choices to things that you as the government deem acceptable. The individual gets crushed in this society as has been demonstrated time and again with collectivist governments all over the world.
The Israeli’s made the right choice in making their trade. I would hope that we in America would make a similar trade if called upon to do so. It is the right thing to do for the individual. Who knows what that individual will accomplish in his life? Maybe it is not his life that will benefit society, but a child of his will find something that will benefit society. The possibilities are endless on the good that can come from this trade for the Israeli’s. The Palestinians just got a bunch of killers and thugs in their midst. That never helps any society at any time. They lost in this trade no matter how many more people they received.