The ability to reason is often seen as a distinctively human trait, distinguishing us from other animals. It may (or may not) be uniquely human, but another quality seems to be, and that is our moral sense. We can argue about whether a crow's ability to solve some puzzles as well, or often better, than some human beings constitutes a form of reason, but nobody expects a crow or a cat to stop doing something it wants to out of a sense that it is "wrong" to do so.
As far as I know, a moral sense is unique to human beings, and one of the foundations of our moral sense is empathy for other sentient beings. Empathy is not the sole source of moral behavior, but it is an important pillar of support for it. What makes a sociopath a sociopath is the absence of empathy--which is sharing the feelings of others. It's why we wince when we see somebody hurt badly or get upset when others are experiencing upset.
That's why we tend to admire particularly empathetic people--we associate it with being moral because it is a necessary precondition to being moral, instead of just a follower (or breaker) of rules.
Americans murdered in Baltimore? Silence.
— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) May 30, 2025
A criminal illegal alien deported? Stop the presses.
That's the modern Left's ideology—anarcho-tyranny.
Freedom for criminals, and oppression for law-abiding citizens. pic.twitter.com/CNep8OmRY1
But an excess or misdirection of empathy is not a virtue, and all of us tend to have empathy for only the people with whom we identify. We have in-groups and out-groups, and that matters quite a bit. We see this in its most extreme cases in war, because the most extreme things always happen in war. Genuinely moral people can do horrible things to people who are enemies without remorse.
In an ideal world, everybody would be in the in-group, but good luck waiting for that to happen. And why stop with human beings, or just thinking animals? Plants react to negative and positive stimuli--do or should we feel the pain of a plant trampled underfoot? As with all virtues, we prioritize the closest relationships and balance self-preservation with fellow feeling.
And then there is suicidal empathy, which seems to be a manifestation of inverting in-groups and out-groups.
Senator Eric Schmitt takes a good shot at explaining what appears to be the suicidal empathy we see in many liberals--a tendency to invert the ladder of priorities that all good people rely on to make moral decisions. Since life requires choices--as long as there are conflicts over resources, interests, value systems, or needs, we have to make choices that benefit some and harm others.
Schmitt is a Senator from Missouri and not an especially prominent figure in the Republican Party. He was only elected in 2022, and to be honest, he was not on my radar and may never be again for all I know, but this clip from his appearance on the Daily Signal's podcast resonated with me.
We can argue endlessly about any particular deportation case, the proper process, or all the niceties of immigration policy. I understand why some people want immigration policies that differ from mine, which differ from others (including Trump at times), but it is striking to me that most of the Democratic went absolutely insane over the deportation of an MS-13 gang member and work day and night to prevent the deportation of Tren de Aragua members while, at the same time, being totally indifferent to the fact that the Biden administration failed to even investigate 65,000--read that again--actual reports of migrant children who were endangered.
They abandoned CHILDREN while fighting for gang members. Unbelievable.
Nor was there any urgency about reports of surging crime by illegal migrants, city budgets groaning under the burden of housing and feeding illegal aliens, or the howls of despair from their own constituents. It was nicely summed up in this exchange.
NEW: JD Vance torches ABC’s Martha Raddatz after she minimized the illegal immigrant gang takeovers because “only a handful” of apartments complexes have been seized.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 13, 2024
Raddatz: “The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes...”
Vance: “Do you hear yourself? Only… pic.twitter.com/TPXdNTD5UH
At some level, it is not wrong or immoral to have concern that even very bad people be treated humanely--I don't revel in prison rape and wince at jokes about very bad people being harmed by other very bad people--but it is morally corrupt to care more about that than about innocents being harmed by evil people, or even just people who are less well off than they.
Democrats often invert the ladder of empathy--they identify more with the criminal than the victim or the foreigner than with their fellow citizens. You see that when, in Great Britain, a person can land in jail with a longer sentence than a pedophile rapist, as happens.
There is nothing to admire here in the least. It is a perversion of morality and an inversion of empathy's function in human community.
I see this bizarrely selective empathy all the time. Outpourings of sympathy for one group of people laid off, and no concern at all for others, who get told to "learn to code."
Caring about the homeless and drug addicts reflects well on you; turning your city into 2025 Portland does not.
Caring about reforming the healthcare system is a very good thing; applauding Luigi Mangione is not.
Democrats don't seem to get this at all. They see us prioritizing the ladder of empathy and think us cruel, while in fact they have simply inverted it. They, too, pick and choose where empathy rules; they just extend more of it to people who in a normal world should be lower on the ladder.
To me, the most striking example is the failure to care about migrant children who have been trafficked into the United States and horribly abused. As they defend open borders and scream, protest, sue, and obstruct any attempts to deport illegal aliens, they have turned their back on tens of thousands of reports of migrant children who are reported to be abused or at risk of being abused.
What is that? Yet I see it not just in Senators like Chris Van Hollen traveling to El Salvador to check on a deported member of MS 13, but lots of truly decent people who think they are being morally righteous.
I don't get it.
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