The War on Empathy

“I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I 

think empathy is a made-up, new age term 

that – it does a lot of damage.”

-  Charlie Kirk, racist violence instigator

I've been wanting to post my chapter on empathy on here for awhile now. 

When I first published my book in 2014, many were still trying to make the “compassionate conservative" brand happen and callous economic policies were still being sold as tough love by both conservatives and centrists alike. Denying cruelty was still a bipartisan reflex back then. Apologists would say things such as “Sure, you can always find fringe figures, but those kooks don't really represent conservatives as a whole." 

Never mind how many of those kooks had already gotten obscenely wealthy by trying to out-bigot each other. Their violent rhetoric and manifest racism were both routine and gleeful. And yet strangely, despite millions of listeners and paid subscribers, they still didn't really represent anyone.

Then, in 2016, The Donald got into office. Two years later, Adam Serwer wrote an essay on Trumpism in The Atlantic entitled “The Cruelty is the Point." But as Serwer subsequently emphasized in his book by that title, cruelty had always been a dark part of our country's politics. Trump was just the latest iteration.

Centrists still defend fascists, but since the fascists have stopped masking their aims and attitudes, doing spin for their benefit has become a bit more difficult. As I wrote in my previous post, both Vice President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth openly embrace a loopy theology that says empathy's a sin. The notion's nutty, but not novel. Secular libertarians have been trying to associate empathy with tyranny since Ayn Rand. The Tea Party just injected that idea into religion.

But I wasn't just trying to identify one shitty tendency in that chapter. I tied it into three others that define conservatism itself – their obvious animosities towards liberty, equality, and democracy. These three ideals are central to America’s identity and as interdependent as the legs of a tripod. And the right despises them.

This ain't a strain to explain. Once you become a second class citizen, you lose some of your rights, right? Well, it also works the other way, so when you lose some of your rights you become a second class citizen. That's just one example of liberty and equality's inherent interdependence.

Indeed, equality was built into Thomas Jefferson's definition of freedom: “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action, according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.” Equal rights. Yes, as a slave owner, he was a hypocrite about it, but he was nevertheless articulating a self-evident truth. 

Conservatives oppose this “no harm/no foul" formulation of freedom because they favor a more restrictive definition and the inclusion of others disquiets them. Why? Because they're authoritarians and correctly perceive that liberty and equality subvert hierarchy. Indeed, the linkage between these two ideals is clear in the word  “insubordination." By disobeying authority, you are undermining the established order of things. By refusing to be bossed, you are asserting both your freedom and your status as an equal.

And democracy ties into this too. Having the vote is both a badge of equality as well as a weapon to defend your other rights. Without it, you're a second class citizen and it's easier to take away more of your rights. 

So, lose any of these three and you'll soon lose the other two if you haven't already lost all simultaneously.

Without equality, universal rights are neither universal nor rights. They become special privileges instead and the portion of the population that still enjoys them predictably begins shrinking the minute exclusions get instituted. As Thomas Paine explained, “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression: for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach unto himself.” Paine was making a call for solidarity with everyone whose freedom becomes threatened. He called it a duty, but he also framed solidarity as intelligent self-interest.

James Madison also saw solidarity as intelligent self interest. Indeed, he saw political diversity as a bulwark for defending everybody's rights. In Federalist #10, he argued that diverse interests could ally to prevent one strong political faction from dominating all the others. Moreover, Madison thought a larger country would be harder to control because it would contain a greater diversity of competing interests:

The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.

Unfortunately, this only works when these diverse interests each have a voice in government. If some have no power to contribute to the collective defense they become non-factors in any political conflict. And potential oppressors understand this and act accordingly. They seek to shrink the sphere – only politically rather than geographically. Consolidating power invariably requires dis-empowering minorities. So, the power hungry will always weaponize bigotry for their own benefit. It's a built-in incentive, which is why we see it repeatedly deployed across human history. In short, tyranny and bigotry always go together.

Say a powerful group has a plurality but not a majority. In other words, they are the biggest group, but they still don't make up over half of the total. Maybe they have 40% but no other single group has more than 20%. They can't bully too overtly at this point or they risk everyone allying against them. First, they must turn the other groups against each other. It's called “divide and conquer." Next, they whittle away at marginal groups, disenfranchising them. The biggest group can thereby turn their plurality into a de facto majority by becoming the majority of those who still hold any power. They don't necessarily need to grow their own numbers if they can shrink other groups' instead.

The incentive to do this always exists and thus the rest must always resist it. Indeed, this dynamic describes much of our country's history – the struggle between those who want to expand the franchise vs those who wish to restrict it. The ideal of democracy is still being realized since, while (almost) everyone has one vote, undemocratic institutions like the Senate and Electoral College mean they don't have equal worth.

This is why the right finds diversity terrifying. Even the slightest uptick in the number of different people around them alarms them. They see any more than the token one as a dangerous and outrageous invasion.

Whatever their individual level of enthusiasm for democracy, many founders worried that their revolution wouldn't last. Some feared that greed and ambition would eventually bring another aristocracy and thought seriously about how to best prevent it. A few of them, like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine had even suggested capping wealth and redistributive taxation. But I covered that in another chapter. Just a few generations removed from the revolution, Abraham Lincoln wrote about this shrinkage of liberty he was witnessing and it filled him with utter disgust:

Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners and Catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to [Tsarist] Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy. (emphasis original)

Empathy boosts solidarity by adding a potent emotional component. It activates solidarity and sustains it when things get difficult. In short, empathy is both a trigger and an energy source. 

It's also important to note that the boosting goes both ways: Practicing solidarity strengthens empathy. Tackling problems together makes you more familiar with both the problems and those you're supporting. The shared experience creates a bond and you're also more likely to notice similar problems elsewhere. Just noticing things grows empathy which in turn raises your antennae and makes you notice even more things. It's a virtuous cycle, and an awakening that makes you more vigilant and civic. In other words, “woke."

Obviously, anyone trying to sabotage our free society would logically start by vilifying empathy, and that's what we're plainly seeing today and everyday. Empathy isn't an earmark of tyranny, but smearing empathy historically is. All the familiar power dynamics in play prove it. As always, the oppressors are projecting.

So, without further ado, here's my chapter on that: