A guest editorial, Offering
‘thoughts and prayers’ is not real empathy, appeared in the New Jersey Star-Ledger on Sunday, October 22,
2017. It was submitted by Brian Regal, a teacher of world history at Kean
University.
Regal’s theme is that empathy must be backed up
with positive action. My problem is not with the theme. There’s some truth to
that. My problem is with some of the types of actions Regal thinks qualifies as
“real empathy.” Without his kind of action, one can not claim empathy, regal
asserts. He writes:
They say suffering builds character. It does more than that, it
helps build empathy. It helps us understand the suffering of others and makes
us want to help them rather than mock them. I had a sergeant major who once
told me, “Never trust anyone who hasn’t had their ass kicked in a fight.” That
was because they couldn’t feel empathy for someone who had. It seems many
current political leaders and pundits have never really suffered. I come to
this position based upon the behavior.
Empathy is an emotional reaction to the suffering of others, which
prompts us to help them in some way. Empathy is seeing someone fall on the
street unable to get up, and you go over and help them. Not having empathy is
when you go over to the person who has fallen and you steal their wallet and
then laugh about it.
In what way does he mean “help them in some
way?” Certainly, the empathetic ends don’t justify any means, right? Not
according to Regal. Here’s a hint:
Too many of our leaders are behaving as if they are devoid of
empathy for the citizens they are supposed to be helping.
Which leaders are “devoid of empathy”?
Apparently, leaders who believe that government is supposed to protect
individual rights, including the right of each person to decide for ourselves
who, when, and in what capacity to help others. The type of leader Regal
believes is not “devoid of empathy” is the kind that passes laws forcing
all of us to pay for help for people he decides need help, whether the
taxpayer agrees or not. Force, in other words, over voluntarism. It all becomes
clear with this paragraph:
Having no empathy allows you to do certain things. It allows you
to vote to take away people’s health care. It allows you to give more rights to
guns than the people they kill. It allows you to steal people’s homes and call
it good business. It allows you to say that mass murder is “the price of
freedom.” It allows you to go golfing while people are drowning. It allows you
to be handed everything in life, then ridicule poor people for not working hard
enough. It allows you to mock the disabled or the obese or the mentally
challenged.
Let me give my “take” on each charge, in turn.
“It allows you to vote to take away people’s
health care.”
What he really means is to vote to reduce
subsidies that involve legalized government theft—taking the earnings and
property of some people for the unearned benefit of others’ healthcare. No one
has ever proposed to “take away people’s health care” that has been earned and
paid for and agreed to by insurer and customer, or by patient and doctor,
except for those who want to force people into government-approved plans (e.g.,
ObamaCare, which outlawed millions of policies). No one’s healthcare should be
at the mercy of other people’s votes. But that’s what the “empathetic”
socialists of the Left have forced on us. Nor should anyone be denied the
freedom to decide when, who, and in what capacity to back up empathy with
action. Empathy begins with respect for the rights of others to live by
their own judgement.
Regal says that “Not having empathy is when you
go over to the person who has fallen and you steal their wallet.” Fair enough.
But then, neither is it empathetic to steal the wallet of someone who has not
fallen, right? Not according to Regal. Apparently, stealing that person’s
wallet after he has fallen is a lack of empathy. But stealing a person’s wallet
to pay for Regal’s “empathy” for people who have fallen and is unable to get up
is empathetic. In other words, Regal won’t lower himself to actually “go over
and help them.” He wants to force others to do that dirty work.
“It allows you to give more rights to guns than
the people they kill.”
This is nonsensical on its face, and a complete
misrepresentation of the position of advocates of the right to bear arms.
Rights don’t belong to guns; i.e., inanimate objects. No one I know of has ever
said that. Rights belong to individuals, and the right of law-abiding adults of
sound mind and no criminal record to own a gun is really what Regal is after.
Notice the moral inversion: Regal would deny you the right to own a gun for
self-defense, but has no problem using law—the government’s guns—for aggression
against you in the form of legally forcing you to pay for someone else’s
healthcare regardless of your own choice and judgement. He replaces the right
of armed self-defense with the “right” of armed aggression (the starting point
of all welfare state programs).
“It allows you to steal people’s homes and call
it good business.”
If Regal is referring only to eminent domain to
take people’s homes for the sake of a developer, then I’m with him. But somehow
I think he has more in mind—a smear of the mortgage lenders who foreclose on
homes in which the borrower has reneged on his loan commitment. It’s a moral
inversion that blames the victim. Imagine the homeless problem we’d have if
lenders, including banks who have a fiduciary and moral, not to mention legal,
responsibility to their depositors and investors, had no recourse to justice in
the event of a loan default, and thus stopped making mortgage loans!
“It allows you to say that mass murder is ‘the
price of freedom.’”
This is an attack on civilized countries
defending themselves against barbarians who would destroy them (e.g., Imperial
Japan, Nazi Germany, and Jihadist Islam). Regal essentially claims that
civilian casualties resulting from military action designed to defeat the
barbarians is the moral responsibility of the defender--e.g., the U.S. and its
allies--not the aggressor--e.g., Nazi Germany, the Empire of Japan. Another
moral inversion.
“It allows you to go golfing while people are
drowning.”
The evil premise behind a statement of this kind
is that no one has a right to pursue happiness and flourish as long as someone,
somewhere, has needs. It’s not about empathy for the genuine needy. It’s an
attack on the achievement of any kind of good life—to anchor people down to the
most suffering and unhappy state of life, intended to make people feel unearned
guilt for every pleasure they may enjoy. Since no one would actually continue
with his golf game while callously ignoring a person who is literally drowning
in a nearby pond, anti-happiness is the only sentiment this metaphor can be
intended to convey.
“It allows you to be handed everything in life,
then ridicule poor people for not working hard enough.”
It’s hard to make any kind of sense out of this.
Is he railing against inheritance? Is it a Rawlsian premise that, whatever your
achievement, it’s all a matter of luck? In other words, if you learned a trade
or profession or leadership skill and then applied it to a successful lifelong
career or built that successful business, and managed to achieve a non-poor
lifestyle, you didn’t build that? Is he attacking idea that poor people
are incapable of working their way up from poverty in an economically free
society, and cannot take care of themselves without government handouts?
Your guess is as good as mine.
Now, I know that, superficially, Regal is
attacking one man, Donald Trump, as indicated by his “It allows you to mock the
disabled or the obese or the mentally challenged.” But there is a deeper
psychology behind his diatribe—a disrespect for people’s capableness and right
to live by their own individual judgments and make their own independent choices,
and a hatred of self-responsibility, achievement, and happiness. In other
words, you, the “average” person, the “little guy”, is incapable of building
that—so you must be made a ward of the all-powerful state. Even if you are
capable of “building that”-and you do “build that”--you should feel guilty
about it.
You cannot be left free to pursue your own
happiness under a government that protects your inalienable rights to live and
act according to your own capacities and judgement. That’s Regal’s message.
Now, maybe Regal’s position is not that extreme. Maybe he allows for some
freedom. But his message is clear: If you reject aggressive government force,
you lack empathy. But if our political leaders’ empathy is enough for them to
override your rights, then you are not actually free. After all, empathy begins
with respect for the rights of others. Where’s the empathy in Regal’s stance?
No, the job of our leaders is not supposed to be
helping some citizens at the unwilling expense of others. Helping others in the
way Regal means it is the job of voluntary charity (the only genuine kind). Our
leaders should be protecting individual rights equally and at all times,
including for people who have not fallen as well as people who have
fallen. Yes, government officials can feel empathy, like everyone else. But,
like the private citizens they serve, they do not have the moral right to force
their empathy on others—that is, by law. Our leaders and government should be
governed by the principle, the Separation of Empathy and Force. Empathy and
force are really mutually exclusive.
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3 comments:
Yes, true. Everything, here, about empathy and action put forth here is true. It all boils down to something which summarizes in a few words what is said here: no initiation of physical force, not by anybody, particularly not by law and government. Real political and government leaders retaliate against initiatory force upon any of us, and they do nothing else, because they KNOW that is their job whether they have experienced initiatory force upon themselves or not. But, if they have experienced it, they'll have the ability to share the feelings of the victims of initiatory force and, as REAL political and government leaders, they probably will, as per their choice, actually share those feelings. But the 'bottom line' is, do they do what they KNOW regardless of how they learned it? That, is separation of empathy and force.
'Not having empathy is when you go over to the person who has fallen and you steal their wallet and then laugh about it.'
No that's just evil. Based on his definition of empathy, not having empathy would be walking by and ignoring the person who has fallen.
Let's let the cat outa the bag. Empathy is the ability to share feelings about whatever. That doesn't mean you share them. Maybe you reject them, along with the person who has those feelings about whatever. But you are still empathetic. You have the ability, but you don't share, maybe unconsciously, or consciously and by your choice, thus rejecting those feelings. So, HAVING empathy leaves one free to steal the wallet of a fallen one and laugh about it, or to walk by and ignore a fallen one. Empathy is an ability, not a sharing by action, not by body nor by mind.
Now, actually sharing a feeling or sameness of feeling, for appropriate reasons, is different. It's an action of body or of mind, not just a state of being such as ability. Grammatically, it's a verb, not a noun. The actual sharing of a feeling, for appropriate reasons, is sympathy, an action of mind which might be expressed as an outward physical action.
Real political and government leaders, as opposed to crooks in their place, will, by empathy and sympathy for themselves as well as for us, act appropriately for the appropriate reasons for unalienable individual rights under law.
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