The Difference between Sympathy and Empathy

 Closing Guantánamo Fades as a Priority - NYTimes.com

The above linked article from the NYT discusses how support for the plan to close the prison at Gitmo went from having a slight majority of support on inauguration day, to nearly 60% majority for keeping it open by March.  Certainly the failed bombing attempt in Times Square has increased the support for keeping terrorists off our soil and stirring up the anger levels again.  But I believe there is more to it than that.

The Moonbat plan was to close camp Xray and move all the prisoners to some civilian prison on US soil.  Several Liberal Lawmakers made political hay out of the plan by saying that they would be glad to house the terrorists in their states.

I think that is where things began to falter for the hope’n’change crowd.  It went from theory to reality.

“close gitmo!, no military tribunals!, civil rights!”  “close gitmo!, no military tribunals!, civil rights!” “Bush  Lied, people died!”

 

  “We are bringing them to your city”

 

 

“close gitmo!, no military trib….no…wait, what?  near my home and my children? In my community?  No, I want Gitmo closed but I don’t want them in my backyard.”

There is the real break in the mental processes that separates logical, pragmatic, realistic, liberty loving, constitutional libertarian thought from  impassioned, emotional, irrational, illogical moonbat ‘thought’. 

When the argument for closing Xray went from some theoretical exercise where the terrorists would be housed out of sight and out of mind, and the libtards could feel that they were being morally superior and all goody- goody, safe in the knowledge that Khaled Sheikh Muhammed was being treated with Kid gloves, but far far away from them; to theoretically being held within 30 miles of their homes with underpaid and undermotivated civilian guards the whole thought experiment was made real.

This is something I have expressed before.  When any of the Liberals pet issues is put into a perspective where it would actually affect them, the tune suddenly changes.  They move from Sympathy to Empathy.   Sympathy for the perceived situation, to empathy with how actually being in the situation feels.

Other cases in point:  Many are against hunting, feeling as though it is animal cruelty.  In several cities suburban hunting permits for deer are issued to well qualified archers.  There is usually the obligatory protest of people wanting to “live with Nature” until a deer runs into the side of their Hummer H3 and dents it all up.  Then there is the chorus of “kill bambi” which reinforces what farmers and ranchers have known all along, Man and Animal can coexist, as long as both sides are controlled.  Fact: Deer are hard on crops, fences, and automobiles and until the Sympathy for Deer becomes Empathy with someone who has had the beejesus scared out of them and cost them a few thousand bucks in auto repairs by a suicidal deer, it is not “real” to some people.   

Take Arizona and the illegal immigration debate as an example; it is very easy for a senator from a northeastern state, or someone who lives in a gated community far removed from the border to denounce what the citizens of Arizona have been clamoring to have for years.  Arizona needs to secure the border it shares with a foreign country because there is a serious crime wave going on down there and no one but Arizonans are going to do anything about it.  Arizona has no hope to stop the crime wave if they cannot control the free movement of foreigners back and forth across their border.   Now, if one of Nancy Pelosi’s grandkids was kidnapped by a foreign invader from mexico, do you not think that immigration reform would suddenly find its way onto the House Calendar?  It is like the old west in southern Arizona now, with the criminal element coming into the state to commit its’ crimes and then hightailing it back across the border, like Pancho Villa or something.

I remember when I was younger there was a huge debate in Missouri regarding “bussing”.  Many rural and suburban schools were predominately White, and many inner city schools were predominately Black.  This was obviously (to democrats) a problem.  In support of this was the fact that inner city schools performed more poorly than those of the suburbs.  Now, I firmly believe that the real source of the problem is not Race, but one of culture. There is nothing inherently inferior about anyone’s skin color or ethnicity. 

But I can take any child and ignore them, never teach them right from wrong, show them that might always makes right, that society “owes them something”, and turn them into the perfect weapon of self destruction. 

The solution was to spend huge amounts of taxpayer money on “bus-ing”  white kids to inner city schools and black kids to Suburban schools.  I would have argued that the lower test scores and higher dropout rates in the cities was not related to race at all and would have probably spent the money on some sort of job creation, community outreach, and parenting classes for families in those areas where performance was suffering.  But that is not what happened, does anyone care to guess or remember the result?  Performance of both types of schools went down, violence went up, and parents got angry.   Once the feral kids who were (un)raised by people succored from the government teat were introduced into schools where more parents took an active role in their children’s education everyone suffered.  The issue was not because some kids were black and some were white,  it was because a majority in one group were effectively tutored in how to be a productive member of society, and a majority of the other group were raised as though in the wild.  This whole issue went from being a sympathetic thought experiment in forced diversity, to an empathetic real world experience of what happens when children who have never been taught how to behave in society mix with less violent ones who were raised by people who believe that you can socially engineer the demographics of a city. 

One more short example:  Two years ago there was a huge sympathetic outpouring of support for a little known Freshman Senator from Illinois to become The President of the United States.  He promised Hope, and Change.  People said, “just give him a chance.”  The sentiment was one of sympathy for his message, and the historic nature of  half black man as president.  Now that we have moved into an empathetic situation of dealing with he and his friends’ policies more and more people agree with those of us who said that he had no executive experience, had questionable judgment in choosing friends and associates, and no more cared about the rights of  the oppressed or the economic opportunities of the poor than any other Despotic ruler throughout history, irrespective of his genetics.  Popular sentiment is now changing.  But that is ok, society forgets these lessons every two generations or so.

-KOOK