Is Leftist Compassion Merely a Self-Serving Façade?

Blinded by tribalism, ego, and dogmatic certitude, loving-kindness gets left by the wayside

Let none deceive another, Or despise any being in any state. Let none through anger or ill-will Wish harm upon another. Even as a mother protects with her life Her child, her only child, So with a boundless heart Should one cherish all living beings; Radiating kindness over the entire world: Spreading upwards to the skies, And downwards to the depths; Outwards and unbounded, Freed from hatred and ill-will.

— Gautama Buddha, Karaniya Metta Sutta

If you were handed two notecards — one labeled “Republican” and the other labeled “Democrat” — and were then asked to write down the word “compassion” on the card you felt best exemplified that noble virtue, which card would you choose? The card of “hope and change” or that of “fuck your feelings?”

I don’t think even the fiercest of partisans from either side would dispute which card’s getting annotated.

So, if that’s the case, one might reasonably expect to see that virtue suffused throughout members of that particular party, and more broadly across those of that political persuasion in general. One might expect — in both word and in deed — to see compassion as a driving force and guiding principle behind their actions and rhetoric. And to some extent, one does.

President Biden, for instance, has certainly tried. As he remarked in his first State of the Union address:

We must be the nation we have always been at our best. Optimistic. Hopeful. Forward-looking. A nation that embraces, light over darkness, hope over fear, unity over division. Stability over chaos. We must see each other not as enemies, but as fellow Americans.

Or, as that great orator of years past, Robert Kennedy, eloquently opined:

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

But what about the more mundane, everyday kind of interactions amongst ordinary folks? What about the words spouted and attitudes displayed by a broad range of self-styled leftists on cable news shows and social media, on picket signs and protest slogans, in op-eds and blogs and comments sections? Should not one reasonably expect to find compassion as a continually recurring theme throughout all these places too, as a rule over the rare exception?

Well, as someone who writes frequently about politics from a fiercely independent (and mostly centrist) perspective, I’ve been a bit, shall we say, underwhelmed by what I’ve witnessed over the past decade in regards to civility — much less compassion — both online and off.

And, for myself at least, probably due to the fact that I prefer poking the side I’d like to believe is more intellectual and capable of understanding nuance and subtlety than their supposedly angry and dogmatic counterparts, it’s overwhelmingly come from one direction.

Casting my gaze thus leftward, I can honestly say (to both my amusement and dismay) that I’ve seen far less Siddhartha than I’ve seen this guy:

Don’t believe me? Try searching Medium for the phrase “stupid republicans.” Or, if you want to get more jargony, try searching “GQP.” Here are a few representative examples:

You get the drift. Regardless of how much you may agree with those sentiments (and irrespective of “bothsidesism” and the equal vitriol that’s become de rigueur for many on the Right), looked at objectively, they can’t exactly be described as dripping with compassion.

And don’t even get me started on some of the gems that have been deposited in the comments sections of my own essays. It’s gotten so bad, in fact, I’m half-considering collecting the most toxic of abuse I’ve received into a dossier of sorts I’ll call “Leftists Behaving Badly.”

All joking/not joking aside though, I think there would be genuine value in such a compilation. Because I believe, whenever possible, it’s always best to let people’s own words speak for themselves so as not to be accused of bias or projection or the stuffing of strawmen.

Moreover, people’s words say a lot about them, both as an individual person and as a representative of whatever self-professed group they claim membership in. But often, the gap between words and deeds, or between words and ideals, can be so vast as to become a gaping chasm of hypocrisy. And there’s nothing in this world I detest more than hypocrisy.

So let’s look at some of those words from all manner of leftist writers, thinkers, politicians, and commentators that have been projected into the public sphere, and let’s rate them on a scale of Buddha to Breitbart, with the reader as judge.

We’ll start with the granddaddy of them all, Karl Marx, who, like his spiritual successors of today, sought not equal opportunities for all but equal outcomes. Look how his compassion for all of humanity of all stations shines through as he declares:

The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

…the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.

To which he ominously added:

Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

So, to paraphrase, all bosses and landlords must die. How charming. Pure compassion, that.

But such unbridled, violence-advocating envy was from a long time ago, right? It doesn’t count. We’re talking about the present-day Left.

Okay. Fair enough. How about this one instead then, from those modern champions of rights and dignity for all, Black Lives Matter, in response to the horrors perpetuated against mostly civilian Jews in Israel on October 7th:

I mean there’s tone deaf and then there’s, I don’t know, DEI?

Carrying on with this theme, if we wish to be more high-minded in our glaring lack of basic human compassion for the plight of others, consider these statements from the over-a-century-old liberal mouthpiece, The New Republic where the author is gloating over red state suffering while advocating for a “Bluexit” secession from the U.S.:

We give up. You win. From now on, we’ll treat the animating ideal on which the United States was founded — out of many, one — as dead and buried. …We’ll still be a part of the United States, at least on paper. But we’ll turn our back on the federal government in every way we can, just like you’ve been urging everyone to do for years, and devote our hard-earned resources to building up our own cities and states. We’ll turn Blue America into a world-class incubator for progressive programs and policies, a laboratory for a guaranteed income and a high-speed public rail system and free public universities. We’ll focus on getting our own house in order, while yours falls into disrepair and ruin.

It’s enough to make one want to run straight out to the front yard to post a preachy sign reminding everyone that, “In this house we believe… love is love and kindness is everything.” Totally.

Anyway, I think you get the gist. All humans are fallible. All humans are wont to give in to our worst, most judgmental and tribalistic impulses — a condition from which no party or partisan is exempt.

But that said, just as hypocrisy is loudly and deservedly called out when some sanctimonious, homophobic, evangelical blowhard gets caught in a gay tryst with an underage male prostitute, so should it be called out when the side that prides itself on its superiority in the compassion department acts anything but.

Can you imagine if instead of dismissing a large segment of America’s citizenry as a “basket of deplorables,” Hillary had instead referred to them as “opportunities for redemption”? Now that would be compassionate.

Or, imagine if instead of writing off racist, redneck hicks from Arkansas as being nearly subhuman for their horribly hateful and misguided views on melanin, it was acknowledged that holding such views is as much a part of their cultural upbringing as being Muslim is to a Pashtun herder from Afghanistan or being vegetarian is to someone conceived in the back of a VW Bus and named “Moonchild.”

Did not Martin Luther King Jr. himself bravely assert that:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Hating on anyone — even those who are consumed with hatred themselves — does nothing but bring more hatred into the world. And I think we have plenty of that to go around these days.

So on that note, just to bring things full circle, next time the orange-skinned (and hopefully soon-to-be-orange-jumpsuit-clad) MAGA monster says something absurd and outrageous that he knows will drive lefties into utter conniption fits while he’s laughing his enormous ass all the way to the White House, keep in mind the noble advice of that perhaps most compassionate human of all time, the Buddha, when he said:

Silence the angry man with love. Silence the ill-natured man with kindness. Silence the miser with generosity. Silence the liar with truth.

Because if you’re unwilling or incapable of silencing evil with love, then you might as well silence yourself instead.

Colby Hess is a freelance writer and photographer from Seattle, and author of the freethinker children’s book The Stranger of Wigglesworth.

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