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.
1. It wasn't "compassionate" to close our mental hospitals. The impulse was understandable; plenty of those facilities were substandard. But the results were catastrophic. Until fairly recently in this country's history, the "homeless" population consisted largely of small numbers of unattached males who drifted from place to place seeking work. But since the 1980s, the homeless population of the U.S. has exploded. Nearly three-quarters of a million people are homeless, and the number jumped 18 percent from 2023 to 2024. California has 187,000 of the country's homeless; more than 70,000 are in Los Angeles County alone.
2. It isn't "compassionate" (nor is it respect for "individual autonomy" or "dignity") to leave the homeless to live as they do. Homeless encampments are hotbeds of filth (including human urine and feces), crime and diseases like leptospirosis, typhus, hepatitis, tuberculosis and even plague. Across the country, cities are dealing with the economic impact of shuttered stores and declining downtowns attributable to the presence of ever-growing numbers of homeless.
3. It isn't "compassionate" to hand out needles or create places where addicts can use drugs. Leaving aside what should be an obvious argument that we shouldn't be encouraging, much less facilitating, the use of dangerous drugs, two-thirds of America's homeless have a diagnosed mental health illness. A third have a serious substance abuse problem. Approximately half suffer with both. Open-air drug use exacerbates those problems and creates others.
4. It isn't "compassionate" (or "equitable," for that matter) to eliminate teaching math, giving grades, standardized tests, advanced academic programs for gifted students or graduation requirements, or to lower entrance qualifications for college and graduate school. It punishes high-achieving students and sends the message to lower-performing students that they aren't capable of meeting basic standards. That, then, undermines public confidence in the graduates of our high schools, colleges and professional schools.
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 has had a beneficial impact 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 501(c)(3) 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' pursestrings. 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.
Why has the United States become a nation where "compassion" trumps all other considerations?
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.
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.