How Hillary Clinton turned empathy into a political cudgel

Reading Hillary Clinton’s recent Atlantic essay, “MAGA’s War on Empathy,” I felt an emotion I did not expect: a sliver of sympathy, maybe even empathy, for her.

Clinton ranks among the most ruthless political operators of the last century. She came within inches of the presidency, the prize she wanted most, only to lose to Donald Trump — a man she treated as an absurdity for much of the 2016 campaign.

Perhaps the most problematic element of Clinton’s discussion of empathy is her unserious understanding of Christian teachings.

It would be easy to dismiss her Atlantic broadside as cynical posturing. She loads it with politicized misrepresentation, then uses Minneapolis as her stage for accusing the Trump GOP of cruelty. Still, the piece reveals something more important than spin: It exposes the moral core of today’s Democratic Party.

If Clinton only wanted a talking point, she could have posted it on X or dashed off a short op-ed. She wrote 6,000 words because, to a meaningful extent, she means it. In that respect I differ from Pastor Joe Rigney, one of her targets, whose response was excellent.

Clinton has pushed “empathy” for years. In her “basket of deplorables” speech, she described the need to “empathize” with the half of Trump’s supporters who weren’t racist, sexist, or xenophobic. After her defeat, she urged “radical empathy” in a 2017 Medium essay and argued that empathy belongs at the center of policy and politics — a theme she has repeated ever since.

Yet she misunderstands both the GOP and empathy itself.

Empathy, the left’s blind spot

Survey after survey shows liberals, not conservatives, struggling to extend empathy across political lines. Far more liberals than conservatives describe the other side as evil rather than misinformed or misguided. Liberals also report a greater willingness to cut conservatives out of friendships, business relationships, and civic life based solely on politics.

Conservatives, in practice, empathize with liberals more readily than liberals empathize with conservatives.

Clinton also misunderstands Trump. Private citizens who meet him one-on-one often praise his personal warmth. He calls people when they struggle. He spends extra time with victims and families. When he speaks harshly in public, he usually does so for deliberate political reasons. In political warfare, Trump often uses his feel for his opponents’ psychology to press the exact buttons that work.

Immigration provides another example. Clinton imagines that people who support deportations “delight” in suffering. Most do not. Many empathize with illegal immigrants — and refuse to let unbounded empathy shut off their brains.

I take a hard line on immigration. I support deporting every person here illegally and sharply reducing legal immigration as well. Yet I can sympathize with someone who has lived here for years, even decades, or someone brought here as a child. They have relationships. Many contribute in real ways. (Overall, illegal immigration produces a highly negative net impact.)

Still, incentives matter. If a sympathetic story becomes a stay of deportation, we lose border control. Good leadership means making difficult, rational choices that benefit the nation, even when those choices impose real costs on individuals.

Clinton praises Minnesota’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement vigilantes as a form of “neighborism,” essentially helping your neighbors regardless of background. She ignores the obvious: Many of the “neighbors” she celebrates include violent felons, child sex abusers, fraudsters, and other criminals.

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The mouth of the foolish

Clinton’s most revealing mistake involves Christianity. She accuses “far-right” Christian leaders who support Trump of discarding dignity, mercy, and compassion. Those virtues matter, but they do not exhaust Christian teaching. Mainline denominations that treat them as the whole faith have collapsed for a reason.

Christian statesmanship requires balancing virtues. Some moments demand compassion; other moments demand a steel spine. That does not contradict empathy rightly understood. It recognizes biblical limits. An empathy that destroys a nation does not reflect scriptural compassion.

Clinton’s Atlantic essay does not defend empathy. It weaponizes it, turning a virtue into a moral bludgeon and makes a nation into its target.

Clinton attacks Trump, JD Vance, and their supporters for criticizing Rev. Mariann Budde, who used a post-inauguration service at Washington National Cathedral to lecture Trump on compassion for immigrants, the LGBTQ community, and other “marginalized” groups. The backlash did not begin with disagreement over policy.

Budde took a moment of honor and turned it into a scolding. She showed no empathy for Trump or the millions who oppose her views for sincere reasons. She practiced selective “empathy,” stripped of prudence and judgment. Trump put it plainly afterward: She brought her church into politics “in a very ungracious way.”

Clinton also targets BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey and her book “Toxic Empathy,” which Clinton calls “an oxymoron.” “I don’t know if the phrase reflects moral blindness or moral bankruptcy, but either way it’s appalling,” she writes.

Clinton again refuses empathy toward her opponents. A serious engagement with Stuckey’s argument would start with the subtitle: “How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion.” Stuckey does not attack compassion in principle; she attacks its political hijacking. Clinton responds with a pious sneer about what she believes Jesus preached “in his short time on Earth.”

Even when Clinton praises Erika Kirk’s radical forgiveness, she shows theological shallowness. Christians must forgive personal wrongs when repentance occurs. The magistrate must pursue justice for the community. Clinton’s kindergarten version of Christian morality has hollowed out the churches that adopted it.

Clinton claims to be shocked that 25% of Republicans and 40% of self-described Christian nationalists agree with the statement that “empathy is a dangerous emotion that undermines our ability to set up a society guided by God’s truth.” She should not feel shocked. Many Americans have watched the left weaponize empathy to advance policies that punish citizens and reward lawlessness.

RELATED: Wokeness runs on ungratefulness — and normal people are over it

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Empathy without judgment becomes cruelty

“MAGA sees a world of vengeance, scorn, and humiliation, and cannot imagine generosity or solidarity,” Clinton argues. She gets it backward. Solidarity with my fellow Americans drives my willingness to fight for their interests on immigration and beyond. Surface-level empathy often conflicts with long-term social health, even when Clinton and her allies sneer at those who say so.

Clinton hopes conservatives “recognize the humanity” of an illegal immigrant family and decide that mass deportation “has gone too far.” I recognize that humanity already. If mere recognition of humanity dictated policy, I could not justify closing the border to anyone except the worst criminals. That path ends in disaster.

If MAGA people offer heartfelt hugs to illegal immigrants while placing them on deportation flights, will Democrats stop obstructing enforcement? I doubt it.

A wise Christian leader shows mercy after victory in war. When unchecked immigration tears the nation’s social fabric, wise leaders stand firm for the long-term interests of their people and reject emotional manipulation — a Clinton specialty for decades.

Clinton’s Wellesley commencement address in 1969 shows how deep this runs:

Part of the problem with just empathy with professed goals is that empathy doesn’t do us anything. ... The challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible. ... We’re not interested in social reconstruction; it’s human reconstruction. ... But we also know that to be educated, the goal of it must be human liberation.

In that undergraduate statement, spoken more than 50 years ago, the roots of Clinton’s “empathy” show themselves. Her embrace of what Thomas Sowell called the “unconstrained vision” defines the modern left: politics as alchemy, liberation as entitlement, human nature as clay.

That vision cannot survive contact with limits — so it recasts limits as cruelty and calls dissent “hate.” Clinton’s Atlantic essay does not defend empathy. It weaponizes it, turning a virtue into a moral bludgeon and making a nation into its target.

Editor’s note: A longer version of this article was published originally at the American Mind.