"Empathy Isn’t Really Empathy, You See"

Princess Neoterica has decreed as follows:

Give Ruth Marcus credit: she realizes that the [P]resident got into some hot water by suggesting ”empathy’is a primary consideration in selecting a Supreme Court judge. The [P]resident didn’t actually mean that he wants a Supreme Court justice who harbors sympathy toward one side or the other — because that would be wrong (wink, wink). No, he’s looking for someone with experience which will ‘inform’ the judge’s thinking, you see. So, she says, Justice Powell would have come out differently in the Bowers v. Hardwick sodomy case if he had known some same-sex couples. Let’s stipulate that the [P]resident has no problem expressing himself and does not lack for vocabulary. So he could have said he was looking for "life experience to inform the justice’s thinking" if that’s what he meant. But even taking Marcus’ interpretation at face value, we don’t get away from the central problem. If Marcus is right that Powell would have ruled differently had he known gay people, that would mean his interpretation of the case would have been "informed" by bias, albeit friendly bias, toward the litigants. And that’s exactly the problem. One’s degree of empathy or chumminess with the litigants, or people like them, should have no bearing on the cases before the justice. Otherwise, one would have to excuse a justice who had lots of gay friends and felt oodles of empathy toward them because she could not impartially evaluate disputes involving gay rights issues. That surely can’t be right. We expect her to ignore those relationships and look to the meaning of the Constitution, the statutes before her, and the precedent from prior decisions. We are, in this instance, trying to decide what the Constitution means not whether democratically elected legislators should pass laws protecting gays from discrimination. Marcus is trying her best to tap dance around the premise which is plainly animating the Obama justice search. He wants ‘empathy’ to guide the justice in reaching outcomes which favor the down-and-out, minorities, women, employees, and criminal defendants. And if you doubt that, go back and look at every confirmation hearing over the last couple of decades. Democrats railed against judges who had written decisions which ruled against these parties. The nominees were therefore tagged as ‘insensitive’ because they did not find a way to conform the law around a favorable outcome for these groups. That’s what’s going on here. If honest, Democrats would own up to it and stop apologizing for the president’s refreshingly candid admission of what he is up to.

Thanks to a certain infamous pea that whole Himalayas of mattresses cannot extinguish, Her Imperial Highness may know more about the flip side of ‘empathy’ than anybody else alive today. Fancy Princess Neoterica passin’ judgment on a pea-related controversy!

But that is in fact what H. I. H. does here, Mr. Bones. As far as I can see, Princess Neoterica's notions--which we shall unilaterally stipulate to be ‘honest’ and subjectively sincere notions, although forewarned right here that Her Highness will never reciprocate--about the Supreme Court are much of a muchness with Her opinions about college and university admissions and civil-service examinations and the like:

COMMANDMENT XI: Thou shalt not commit Affirmative Action!

If that be the heart of this matter, as I think it is, then ‘empathy’ is only a side-show even on the good guys’ side of the aisle. So up to a point we agree: Her Imperial Highness considers ‘empathy’ to be a lie in this context, and lies are always secondary to the truths they propose to conceal or subvert, are they not? (Of course they are!)

I myself relegate ‘empathy’ to the sidelines on quite different grounds, as being one possible motive for Affirmative Action but not at all the substance of it. The general neocomradely agitprop about the AA issue differs a little from Princess Neoterica's, it seems to me: ‘empathy’ or somethin’ very like it is admitted as regards one particular class of democratic and l*b*r*l fiends. The identity of that class is not difficult to guess from when the neocomrades start goin’ on against WLG, "white liberal guilt," in their only too familiar way.

Thus ‘empathy’ would automatically be required of, for example, a hypothetical Neocomrade Justice A. Dershowitz, whereas the really existin’ Neocomrade Justice C. Thomas need hardly trouble himself about it. If St. Rudyard of Kiplin’ were with us at this hour, I daresay he might add ‘empathy’ to The White Man’s Burden. Unlike Her Imperial Highness, though, St. Rudyard appears to have been a sort of Affirmative Action groupie, to the extent that any Brit imperialiser and colonialiser of 1899 could be such a thing without anachronism: "To seek another's profit / And work another's gain" could, in isolation, easily be diagnosed as a symptom of the WLG flu. [1] [2]

The refusal to be bullied into WLG was, I think, Pillar II of the original Hate-’68 Movement™, with AntiCommunism as Pillar I and HyperZionism only Pillar III. The annus horribilis was quite a long time ago, however, and Princess Neoterica is a second-degeneration specimen. Her Imperial Highness is not on speakin’ terms with any sort of economics, really, but one may be quite sure that such dreams as that damn pea allows Her are not troubled by dark thoughts of successes and victories for Scientific Socialism. Or for the Muscovite neo-Mongols of Pipes Major either.

Removal of Pillar I left thee and me without any reason to take much further interest in The Common Terror magazine and all its playmates, but naturally it matters more what the neocomrades of the strict observance thought they were doin’ after 1989 or 1991 than what outsiders think of it. Certainly their fear and loathin’ of Affirmative Action never wavered for a second, and naturally Hyperzion loomed larger than before. The two active ingredients of Phase Two neotericity can be painted as complementary or antagonistic: no individual Homelander™ or particular Homeland™ interest group is to get any Affirmative Action, but a certain Levantine statelet is to be favoured with relentless disproportionality.

That's the antagonistic portrait, of course: the complementary one is not far to seek, though it may be a bit infra dignitatem to mention it out loud. To take partial refuge in an extinct language: if one asks Cui bono? about each survivin’ Pillar of Neotericity, the answer is the same for both. Domestic Affirmative Action is plainly bad for the neocomrades; equally plainly, the export product could hardly be improved upon from their factional standpoint. As simple as that.

Perhaps the neocomradely antagonism to WLG can now be promoted to Pillar III? They certainly have no intention of feelin’ the least bit guilty about "self-defense" in the neo-Levant, and is not wardin’ off the dreadful prospect of "Madam Justice Sotomayor" a self-defense issue at bottom also? However it is not up to thee and me to shape their neoïdeology for them, Mr. Bones. And we mun singen Deo gratias that this is so.

When it comes to makin’ their neoïdeology our Uncle Sam's policy, however, it is not unseemly for us to intervene in the internal and foreign affairs of our own holy Homeland™ from time to time, sir. We might even perhaps represent such intervention in a self-defensive (or preëmptively retaliatory, modo crawfordiense) light, although it would be wise to profit from the examples of Professor Walt and Mr. Mearsheimer, should we resolve to move in that direction. Now that the electorate has dismissed their Boy and their Party from the White House, now that their Boy's Party’s AEIdeology suddenly finds itself hard-pressed and on the defensive thanks to the Crawford Crash™, there is really no very urgent need for us to do anything at all. Not even empathize with Judge Sotomayor, or ‘antempathize’ with Princess Neoterica of Pajamastán and Tel Avîv.

Happy days.

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[1] An extremely speculative question arises at this point: would Princess Neoterica reconsider Her cultivated despite for Affirmative Action if the natives and locals who benefit from it were as segregated geographically in 2009 as those whose 1899 profit and gain Mr. Kiplin’ referred to? Our neogentry's notorious "gated communities" are all very well in their way, but unfortunately they do tend to be surrounded by whole vast Sowetos of ’no-count trailer trash.

One faint hint that Her Imperial Highness might be less uncharitable if the objects of Her uncharity were less frequently encountered is that on the whole opposition to expressly avowed foreign aid tends to be concentrated over on the wrong side of the tracks in Rio Limbaugh and Wingnut City. A Neocomrade P. Buchanan is far more likely than a Neocomradess J. Rubin to be found railin’ against it. Patrons of The Common Terror and The Weekly Standard can become really vexed at bein’ taken for Buchananites, so perhaps if all our holy Homeland™ blacks and tans could be gathered together in Patagonia or Madagascar or East Palestine or some such safely remote place, the terrormongers and standardisers would approve of sendin’ them fairly generous monthly or quarterly remittances, if only to rebuke the churlishness of their cultural and educational inferiors.

But God knows best about counterfactual scenarios!


[2] Thee may have noticed, Mr. Bones, that it is much less annoying when the 1899 Kipling pats himself and his political friends (and ‘his’ Empire too! -- which Mr. Chesterton very properly guffawed at) on the back for their sheer disinterested wunnerfulness than when some wingnutette or wingnut contemporary with ourselves starts singin’ that same vile tune. Why do thee suppose that is, sir?

If we guess that it is simply that _de te fabula narratur_ is inapplicable, then there ought to have many 1899 Brits who found St. Rudyard an insufferable vulgar bounder. Now we know that there were some who did so, but were they a majority or plurality? Were Rudyardophobes even ‘normal’ in the statistical sense? I have no idea, myself.

One could also guess that self-wunnerfulness ceases to be offensive provided it is kept a decent distance off in space or time. Ship all the self-backpatters to Madagascar, and perhaps then one would not care if there never was any repentance or amendment of life amongst them. Again, I dunno.