The Problem with Empathy

Empathy used to be a universal moral good. The ability to feel another person’s emotions proved you were a decent person who cared about suffering and injustice. It was something to cultivate, not question. 

Now? In some political circles, it might as well be a slur.

In recent years, empathy has come under siege—from conservatives who see it as weakness and from liberals who wield it like a sword. 

In both cases, the concept has become so emotionally charged that it’s worth asking: Is the word actually dividing us more? 

The Right-Wing Rejection of Empathy

Earlier this year, Elon Musk told Joe Rogan on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” He called it an “empathy exploit,” suggesting that empathy has become a kind of cheat code used to guilt well-meaning people into making irrational or harmful decisions.

That idea, once fringe, began in conservative Christian nationalist circles. Books like Toxic Empathy and The Sin of Empathy argue that progressives use emotional appeals to hijack Christian values and advance left-leaning agendas. The premise? If you’re feeling guilt, pity, or empathy, you’re probably being conned.

The left argues that this idea resonates with the right because it offers a tidy escape hatch. Consider the 4-year-old cancer patient who was deported without medication in April. That’s hard to square with most people’s moral framework. But if you believe emotions are suspect—tools of manipulation—then the problem isn’t immigration policy, it’s the bleeding hearts who want you to care about it. The feeling becomes the enemy, not the action.

Critics of empathy—particularly on the right—would argue that the liberal media promoted this story to generate an irrational emotional response. It zooms in on one heartbreaking case while ignoring the broader reality: that such extreme outcomes are rare, and that enforcing immigration laws has overall benefits for national stability and public resources. In their view, empathy can cloud judgment, making it harder to weigh long-term outcomes or uphold difficult policies that serve the greater good.

The Liberal Weaponization of Empathy

On the left, empathy is often wielded as a moral bludgeon. Disagree with a progressive policy? You must not care about anyone but yourself.

This has the effect of moralizing disagreement: conservatives aren’t just wrong, they’re heartless or evil.

This tendency doesn’t just shut down conversation. It actually backfires. A 2023 study found that conservatives consistently show more cross-party empathy than liberals. In hypothetical scenarios, conservatives extended more empathy to suffering liberals than liberals extended to conservatives. Why? Because liberals tended to judge conservatives as more harmful and therefore less deserving of empathy.

In other words, the political side that champions empathy is also more likely to withhold it from people they disagree with. That kind of moral gatekeeping creates barriers to cooperation and can even be used to justify dehumanization. It doesn’t build bridges—it burns them right down.

Empathy Still Matters—But It Isn’t Enough

The core idea behind empathy—the ability to understand and care about people who are not like you—is essential for any functioning society. It’s the soil out of which solidarity grows. It drives our shared pursuit of dignity, freedom, and a world where everyone is treated with respect. But as a guiding principle for public life, it’s become too messy, too misunderstood, and too easily weaponized.

It’s also an unproductive endpoint. What good is feeling someone’s pain if you do nothing to help them?

So maybe it’s time to try a different word.

Compassion Is The Better Roadmap

In his book Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, Yale psychologist Paul Bloom argues that empathy—at least as most of us understand it—is a flawed guide for making moral decisions. It’s too narrow. Too biased. And too emotionally draining to be sustainable.

Empathy, Bloom explains, tends to zero in on individual stories and vivid emotions. It makes us feel deeply for one person while ignoring the needs of many others. That spotlight effect may help us connect in the moment, but it can also distort our priorities, lead to burnout, and—even unintentionally—feed into tribal thinking. We’re wired to empathize more easily with people who look like us, think like us, or remind us of ourselves. And in a diverse, pluralistic society, that’s a dangerous limitation.

So what’s the alternative? Bloom offers a different path: compassion.

While some conservatives reject empathy as emotional manipulation, and some liberals cling to it as a moral litmus test, compassion sidesteps the impasse.

Unlike empathy, compassion doesn’t ask us to feel someone else’s suffering as our own. Instead, it invites us to recognize suffering, care about it, and act intentionally to reduce it. It’s the difference between being swept away by someone’s emotional current, and calmly offering a steady hand. And crucially, compassion can scale. It doesn’t collapse under the weight of a thousand tragedies—it gets stronger with use.

That shift in framing—from “feel what I feel” to “care enough to help”—could offer a bridge in our polarized culture. While some conservatives reject empathy as emotional manipulation, and some liberals cling to it as a moral litmus test, compassion sidesteps the impasse. It doesn’t demand emotional conformity or deny emotional reality. It simply asks: What can I do to reduce harm?

If both sides could agree to lead with compassion instead of competing narratives of outrage or detachment, we might finally get somewhere.

—Alex Buscemi (abuscemi@buildersmovement.org)

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