Don Feder ranted about “suicidal empathy” in a recent WorldNetDaily column, and fellow columnist Laura Hollis took that idea further in a May 22 WND column:
One of the most frustrating aspects of contemporary conversations about politics and public policy is how often the deleterious effects of terrible programs – local, state and federal – are brushed aside with distracting (and even deceitful) claims that the intentions behind the policies were “compassionate.” This is an utterly wrongheaded analysis for many reasons. Laws, public policies and government programs should be evaluated by their results, not by the state of mind of their advocates or sponsors.
The weaponization of compassion has launched a de facto competition of who can be thought to be the most “compassionate” (or, at least, not thought to be uncompassionate). The result of this arms race has been chaos, destruction and depravity.
It’s easy to lose sight of just how often this pernicious dynamic takes place, so it’s worthwhile to point out a few of the disastrous policies that were promoted (and, in some cases, continue to be promoted) as being “compassionate” and to call them out for the societally corrosive lies they are.
Hollis list some alleged examples, which betrays her right-wing bias:
5. It wasn’t “compassionate” to stop enforcing our immigration laws.
6. It isn’t “compassionate” to allow violent criminals back on the streets.
7. It isn’t “compassionate” to subject children and teenagers with gender dysphoria (and other emotional disorders) to permanent alteration of their bodies with medical and surgical interventions before they are old enough to understand the implications of those decisions.
None of these decisions have had beneficial impacts on their intended populations. Worse still, they are all deeply destructive to other individuals, groups and society at large. Everyone affected should be able to protest the consequences of these failed policies without getting smeared with the false accusation that they “lack compassion.”
Another reason to eliminate “compassion” as a basis for public policy – which we’re seeing daily with painful clarity – is that these policies end up being vehicles for massive fraud. Anyone can set up a 501c3 nonprofit, claim to be working for a charitable purpose, and deceive donors into giving money that does little but line the CEOs’ pockets. And when government grants are involved, there is little oversight (take Minnesota, for example) and more incentive for grift, bribery and payback in the form of pouring money into the campaign coffers of politicians who hold the grants’ purse strings. What we end up with is a situation where neither the nonprofits nor the politicians have an incentive to solve the underlying problems, since they’re getting rich from their continued existence.
Hollis then tries to assign blame for these purported issues:
Scholars like Helen Andrews argue that the emphasis on “compassion” over logic and methodical analysis is a function of what she calls “the great feminization.” Women, Andrews claims, are hardwired to be maternal, and thus more likely to be persuaded by something that tugs at their empathy than by that which appeals to their reason.
I’m not so sure. First, women have functioning brains, and they are certainly intellectually capable of dispassionate analysis. Second, an awful lot of men seem to be just as hornswoggled by appeals to their “compassion” as are misguided women. And third, I don’t understand how it is “feminine” or “maternal” to witness the collapse of huge sections of our cities into third-world slums; or to know that drugs are pouring into the country, children are being trafficked for sex, and young women are being raped and murdered because the borders are unenforced; or to see people stabbed to death on public transportation, pushed in front of trains or run down by crazed lunatics at Christmas parades because criminals aren’t incarcerated; or to watch as multiple generations of disadvantaged minorities struggle because of schools with weak disciplinary and academic standards; or to want children and emotionally troubled teens to be chemically castrated or surgically sterilized before they’re old enough to drive a car, drink a beer or understand the concepts of sexual satisfaction, fathering, giving birth to or nursing a child, none of which they will experience if they are “transitioned.”
None of this is “compassionate.” It’s objectively irrational. It’s wantonly destructive. It is the deliberate disregard of monumental, systemic, catastrophic failure, the evidence of which is irrefutable. There’s something seriously wrong with anyone who continues to defend these policies and programs, and I’m not persuaded that it’s a matter of chromosomal biology or evolution.
Hollis offers no evidence that undocumented immigrants are the cause of crime — in fact, their crime rate is lower than that of native U.S. citizens.
Still, Hollis concluded: “I don’t profess to have a complete solution. But a good start would be to demand meaningful metrics when we discuss proposed (and existing) policies and programs. What matters isn’t “compassion”; it’s consequences.” Perhaps Hollis should retrhink her faulty factual premises before enforcing “meaningful metrics.”