Learning Empathy

[phantom power]

I'm interested in that quote: "Empathy for one party is always prejudice against another."

That statement displays a total lack of understanding of what empathy is. Being able to empathize with multiple parties (or even all parties) is utterly common for anybody with actual empathy. The exact reason we have judges is to apply some kind of human experience to translate a body of law into actual sentencing, or a decision to not sentence.

Empathy is not a zero-sum game. But that's apparently how Conservatives see everything. A zero sum game.

I remember when "empathy" became a dirty word for the Republican Party. It happened after Justice David Souter announced his retirement and President Obama make the following remarks:

"I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.

Republicans ignored most of what the president said and latched onto his idea that a judge should be able to identify with the hopes and struggles of folks who might not even feel welcome in their own country. When Obama selected Sonia Sotomayor (who is Puerto Rican), as his nominee, the Republicans began attacking her for having empathy.

"That is, of course, the logical flaw in the empathy standard," Sen. Jeff Sessions warned. "Empathy for one party is always prejudice against another."

...

The spectacle of seeing someone be criticized for having empathy even puzzled psychologists who had never seen the word used pejoratively before.

Something about the idea of a judge having empathy deeply offended the right, and they didn't care how strange and psychotic and anti-social it made them look. The whole Mighty Right-Wing Wurlitzer cranked up in unison to bash Ms. Sotomayor, despite the fact that she never used the word to describe herself.

...They don't have an ounce of empathy, and they prefer it that way.

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/1/8/102517/1815

[phantom power]

1. Actually, I would quibble: empathy started becoming a dirty word circa the Reagaon administration

At least, in modern political history.