There are those that would suggest that democracy/pluralism celebrates the individual. Nothing could be further from the truth. Democracy doesn’t celebrate the individual; it destroys him. It turns him into a mere cog, an interchangeable part that is no better or worse – no different than any of the other of the many cogs surrounding him in his world. In a democracy the individual is dispensable – disposable, like the Styrofoam cup that holds his morning coffee.

     The Torah teaches that to destroy one individual is to destroy an entire world. For Torah, every individual is sacred; every role in the organism of society, no matter how great or small is significant and important. Each part of the whole is indispensable. It is unique and necessary. No soul is disposable.

     Yet, even further, the public body, cannot fulfill its potential and its mission, unless each individual is present and fulfilling his potential. Further, each person’s individual mission, his individual purpose of existence and its fulfillment is interdependently linked to his fellow traveler’s role and purpose in life. This is the meaning of “All Jews are guarantors for each other.” The word for guarantors, “ערבין- `erev” denotes a mixing. We are all intertwined and interdependent from the king to the servant, from the greatest sage to the simple laborer, each Jew is an integral, singular part of the body Israel

     This is a complete repudiation of the polluting view of democratic pluralism, which in effect reduces every individual to a meaningless, purposeless, interchangeable cog in a meaningless and directionless conglomeration, a machine without function – both the part and the whole. Democratic pluralism blurs all lines and posits that there is no difference between one individual and his neighbor. Each citizen is ineffective, impotent faceless self-contained entity; whose existence or its cessation would not impact the whole, for the “whole” is nothing but a loose collection of unconnected directionless individual entities.

     It is from such a perverse concept of the world that living and life has not only lost their sacredness and depth for the whole of society, but even the individual’s relationship with himself has become superficial, insignificant and inconsequential. Suicide, an increasing event amongst the youth, is only the extreme example of the self-destructive, or more appropriately self-depreciating, behavior that is prevalent in democratic pluralistic society.

     The moral fabric is not decaying in the West; it has been usurped. A society in which all things are equal, in which posits that any choice is equally valid, equally moral and good, effectively declares that there is no such thing as morality or goodness. If there isn’t anything bad or wrong, then neither can there be a good or right. It’s not that a democratic pluralistic society says that “everyone is entitled to his opinion,” but that every opinion is equally valid. The greatest evil of such a society is that it posits that there is no evil, for by doing so it denies all the good and holy that are contained in the world. When the ethos of society declares that everything is expendable, disposable, and even more significant - replaceable, the value of the single unique life is denigrated and demeaned.

     It is a society, which declares, “Use or misuses all you want – we’ll make more.” Such a society is not disturbed by the concept of “social abortions,” that is abortion because of issues of convenience or practicality, wherein a living organism, albeit totally dependent, can be callously eliminated because it would disrupt the self-contained life of its host. Or, where the concept of euthanasia has a place in the marketplace of ideas. It is labeled mercy killing, but the compassion isn’t on the one that is killed but rather on those that would be his caretaker. It is a society wherein the depravity of wife-swapping is condoned, and in some places celebrated as “enlightened.” For, after all, if all things are interchangeable, what difference does the source of one’s sexual release. If people aren’t sacred, how can their unions, their relationships, be so?

     HaShem is a Living G-d. He is real. And we are created in His image, not, G-d Forbid, the other way around. His Truth is discernible and knowable. He acted and acts in history. HaShem brought us to Sinai, and charged the Nation of Israel with a mission, a purpose: to bring and reveal His Holiness in this world. To live a life charged with holiness and sanctity, from its most minute detail to our function as a society. We are charged with making distinctions, with learning about the special and unique nature of everything and everyone, so that we can come to understand the unity and interconnectedness of the whole. In this we can understand our sages pronouncement, that he who destroys one life, it is as if he has destroyed the entire world.