Is the left’s “suicidal empathy” destroying America?

In his latest book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, Dr. Gad Saad, the evolutionary psychologist and scholar affiliated with the University of Mississippi, may have identified the precise malady afflicting the American left. It may explain the underlying cause of progressive policies that seem antithetical to traditional values and common sense.

Saad, who launched the book at Ole Miss to wide acclaim, pulls no punches. As he has stated in television interviews and public appearances, “We care more about the rights of the felon than we care about the victims.” He further explains that empathy is great but “when it goes hyperactive, it becomes fatal.” Saad calls this phenomenon “suicidal empathy”, and he is correct. It is empathy gone amok. It is the orgiastic misfiring of one of our most noble virtues, and it is destroying the fabric of the nation.

Suicidal empathy is not ordinary compassion. It is not racism, xenophobia or any of the other isms. It is the pathological prioritization of empathy over reason, self-preservation, and the common good. It elevates victimhood to virtue and treats punishment as cruel. It conditions people to display empathy for those who harm society while ignoring the victims of that harm. Saad argues that this misdirected altruism leads societies to implement policies that endanger their own survival and security. The left has turned empathy into a political weapon, and the results are plain to see.

This suicidal empathy is inseparable from left-wing virtue signaling. The modern progressives – radical types — do not merely feel sorry for the downtrodden. They must broadcast that sorrow loudly and publicly to prove moral superiority. Virtue signaling demands that one side with the illegal immigrant, or the rioter or the common criminal, no matter the cost to law-abiding citizens. To question such policies is to be labeled heartless. Thus, empathy becomes performative rather than practical. It is not about helping people rise above their circumstances. It is about feeling good about oneself while society crumbles.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the left’s excessive tolerance of crime and antisocial behavior, especially when minorities are involved. Suicidal empathy dictates that criminals must be understood rather than punished. Bail reform, reduced sentences, and defunded police flow directly from this mindset.

The great irony is that suicidal empathy is mutually destructive to all demographic groups – including those to which the empathy is extended. No group suffers more from leniency and lack of enforcement of minority crime than the innocent members of the minority communities themselves. Rioters, looters and the drug cartellians are most active in the minority communities.

The left wrings its hands over “over-incarceration” while violent crime is iconic in America’s cities across the nation. Saad’s insight explains why repeat offenders are released back onto the streets only to victimize again. The focus is not on protecting the innocent but on avoiding any appearance of unfairness toward the perpetrator. We saw and example of that when the judge apologized to the would be presidential assassin Cole Allen for the conditions of his imprisonment. Or when a Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan aided and abetted the attempted effort by a person in her court avoid the execution of an ICE warrant.

When the perpetrator belongs to a favored minority group, the empathy meter goes into overdrive. Facts about crime statistics – or previous criminal record — become irrelevant. The race card is played where none exists, and society pays the price in blood and treasure.

The same suicidal empathy fuels the crisis of illegal immigration. The left cannot bring itself to secure the border because that would require turning away people it has decided to view as victims. Never mind that uncontrolled entry strains public resources, depresses wages for American workers, and allows criminals and terrorists to slip through. Empathy for the migrant overrides empathy for the American citizen whose community is transformed without consent. Yet the left persists, driven by the need to signal compassion while the nation’s sovereignty erodes. There is no better example of suicidal empathy that the creations of sanctuary venues designed solely to put people beyond the reach of the law.

Excess welfare programs follow the same pattern. Suicidal empathy insists that government must provide endless support without demanding personal responsibility or accountability. The result is generational dependency, broken families, and communities trapped in cycles of poverty – and massive fraud.

The left refuses to acknowledge that such policies often harm the very people they claim to help. Instead, any criticism is dismissed as racism or lack of compassion. Playing the race card becomes the default response to any debate about fiscal sanity or cultural norms.

One can view suicidal empathy as a variation of Stockholm Syndrome on a societal scale. Just as hostages begin to sympathize with their captors, large segments of the left have come to empathize with those who do the people and the nation harm. They identify more with the transgressor than with the law-abiding majority. This is not rational policymaking. It is emotional self-flagellation dressed up as moral progress.

Suicidal empathy acts as a virus that infects the DNA of the left. It spreads through academia, media, and politics, replicating itself in every institution it touches. It weakens the immune system of the culture until the host can no longer defend itself. Crime rises. Borders dissolve. Welfare rolls expand. Racial grievance replaces individual merit. All the while, the left pats itself on the back for its kindness even as the country suffers.

Dr. Saad has done the nation a service by naming and defining this affliction so clearly. If America is to survive, it must reject this self-destructive impulse. It must reclaim the balance between compassion and common sense. Without that correction, the left’s suicidal empathy will continue its deadly work until there is nothing left to save.

So, there ‘tis.