I can't stand empathy. I think empathy is a made-up, New Age term that — it does a lot of damage, but it is very effective when it comes to politics. - Charlie Kirk

America became the land to which people from the Old World could flee to ply their trades without answering to guilds, farm land without answering to the lord of the manor, pray without permission from the government’s bishops, and talk about the affairs of the day without fearing reprisals from the king.

That viciousness — the sense of a revolution as a sort of purifying fire — is a zeal rarely seen in US history or British history, unless one counts the current fervor of the left’s so-called social justice warriors, who do sometimes beat, egg, or Molotov-cocktail their political enemies, though for now they more often just strive to purge their enemies from social media platforms and campus speaking engagements.

I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new-age term, and it does a lot of damage. I much prefer the word compassion, and I much prefer the word sympathy. Empathy is where you try to feel someone’s pain and sorrows as if they’re your own. Compassion allows for understanding. I prefer the word sympathy, because politics has weaponized empathy.