Here related is the story of the flea and the man:
"Once, a flea was irritating a man relentlessly. So he caught it and said to it:
'Who are you, who makes a meal of all my limbs, biting me all over at random?'
The flea answered:
'That's the way we live. Don't kill me, for I can't do much harm.'
The man started to laugh and said:
'You're going to die now, and at my hands, for however great or small the harm it is imperative to stop you from breeding.'"
The attitude of this man may catch the modern man off guard. The modern attitude would call this man, "cruel" and state that he should simply "swat the flea away". But to the Greeks and Romans, justice was about doing what is right and not about being attentive to the feelings of your enemy. Ayn Rand once spoke of how the clemency given to the guilty is treason to the innocent. Similarly, any clemency given to a threat is treason not only to your own future innocence, but to the innocence of anyone else upon whom the threat is released.
The statue of Lady Justice displays a blindfolded woman holding a system of weights. In our day-to-day dealings with reality, we must face each problem rationally and free from our passions (blind-folded), weighing the evidence to make a decision. Only in this manner may justice be served. Anything else is treason.
-----Jason Roberts
Comments