Logic versus Empathy: The Problem with Ben Shapiro and the Right Wing

Life is a balancing act. In fact the key to managing almost everything, as the wise will tell you, is moderation and balance. We often find ourselves balancing realism and idealism, caution and boldness, work and leisure, and most notably logic versus empathy. Now, many people, particularly those that are deeply intellectual, tend to favor the ability to be logical. But particularly when it comes to public service and public policy a careful blend of both is desperately needed.

When you have a purely logical individual who is completely devoid of empathy in politics (whether it's a person holding public office or a highly influential commentator/pundit) in particular it presents a unique challenge in conceptualizing policy that doesn't directly impact them or their loved ones.

Case in point Ben Shapiro. He is no doubt a brilliant person, some consider him to be a prodigy, he skipped two grades, was a renowned violinist since early childhood became a best selling author at the age of seventeen and graduated at the top of his class at Harvard Law School and went on churn out more best selling books, found one of the most highly trafficked conservative sites, The Daily Wire, and distinguish himself as the great intellectual of the right.

Now, many people are surprised when I tell them that I regularly enjoy watching his program along with many other conservative shows such as Louder with Crowder and the Michael Knowles show (another Daily Wire podcast). Although I identify as a socialist I find it absolutely fascinating to take in a perspective that I vociferously disagree with.

But the more any decent, center or left of center politically person watches him the clearer it is that he is a God-awful person. His inability to have compassion for anyone leads him to make horrific statements such as "If you have to work more than one job to have a roof over your head or food on the table you probably shouldn't have taken the job that's not paying you enough, that'd be a you problem." He even outright said "empathy is bad for politics, the reason empathy is bad is because it leads you to empathize with people your are more likely to like as opposed to people you don't like..." and goes on to justify it by saying "there are several books about this...talking about how empathy is not actually the best thing for politics it actually deactivates the reasoning centers of your brain because when your empathetic you don't actually create good policy...if empathy is what drives your policy making you're probably not making good policy."

Now, many people across the political spectrum are guilty of buying into the fallacy that if someone disagrees with you they are stupid or ignorant but I disagree I think plenty of people can be highly intellectual, gifted even but have a distorted view of the world. After all, there were genius scientists involved with the Third Reich that championed eugenics, so I guess the question I'm raising here is how can someone as brilliant as Ben Shapiro advocate for such cruel, disastrous and debunked policies? And the answer to that I think is that human beings have a way of selectively taking in information that reaffirms your world-view and find ways to justify discarding evidence that undermines it.

More to the point, Shapiro is a deeply religious person, he faithfully practices the Orthodox Judaism of his heritage and upbringing. And there is this long-held assumption that devoutly religious folks have more compassion and are yearning to help the less fortunate. This is of course not always true but we assume that because in the Christian New Testament Jesus is all about love, forgiveness, tolerance and charity. One of the five pillars of Islam is Zakat (or charity) for the poor. And Judaism always emphasizes Tzedakah which also means charity but in Hebrew.

So what removes Mr. Shapiro and people like him from such humanity? Their version of logic, of course, which in this context comes in the form of asinine, antiquated right wing ideals including but not limited to trickle down economics, preserving starvation wages, slashing the social safety net, disregard for the environment etc. etc. The mental gymnastics religious conservatives like him do to justify inhumane stances is absolutely breath taking.

One lawmaker in the religious right cited the Bible to justify gutting food assistance, saying "the one who is unwilling to work shall not eat." And he is far from the only conservative who has cited that passage to justify letting people starve but what they fail to recognize is that the sizable majority of food stamp recipients also work and this will only further contribute to horrific childhood hunger that many families are still grappling with.

When you put a set of what you think are logical ideals before the humanity, well being and advancement of other beautiful human beings and those people make up more of our elected officials (There are more Republican governors than Democratic ones, and due to a whole host of tactics they often steal the legislature and presidency) we have truly lost all hope for justice in society.

At times it feels like we have more people (conservative Republicans and corporate and moderate Democrats usually) that are more concerned with "evil" socialism/communism/marxism permeating our political systems than people suffering and dying because of a disastrous corporate health care system, food insecurity, housing, racial and environmental injustices, a crushing student debt crisis and so much more.

The willful disentanglement with empathy has had really devastating impacts on millions of vulnerable people in America and the rest of the world. We've seen plenty of examples of this throughout history too with the oppression of women, the slave trade, genocide, colonialism, segregation, hate crimes, etc. While some people clinically can't feel empathy in many cases it is as much a conscious decision as well as cultural.

But despite it all I'm still an incurable optimist at my core and I will never give up hope in the collective redeem ability of human beings. We need to come up with ways to expose people to the struggles and suffering of complete strangers first hand as I believe that is the best way to get otherwise unsympathetic people to understand.

Even the most hardened conservatives changed when they were personally affected by issues: Nancy Reagan was for stem cell surgery when her husband Ronald Reagan became afflicted by Alzheimers, Vice President Dick Cheney is for marriage equality because his daughter is a lesbian, Megyn Kelly is for paid maternity leave after having children of her own, Meghan Mccain's perspective changed on government run healthcare since her beloved father John McCain was diagnosed with the rare brain cancer glioblastoma.

So we should always keep loving and trying to actively understand one another and fight for those who are not in a position to fight for themselves. We are all in this together and we owe it to each other to be smart, informed but most importantly empathetic.