On Friday’s Mark Levin Show, excessive or misdirected compassion in Western societies, especially among progressives, leads to self-destructive policies by prioritizing the needs and feelings of perceived marginalized or external groups over the survival, security, and interests of one’s own civilization, ultimately causing its weakening or destruction. That’s the radical left and how they coddle Islamists even though it destroys our own country. It’s suicidal if we let one more radical Islamist into America or we don’t remove those here for the cancer they are spreading. Marxists, Islamists, and the Left deliberately manipulate language as a weapon to advance their agenda against ordinary Americans. Also, Iran is becoming the North Korea of the Middle East. It exists to fund the regime and its police state and military. The people are suffering from a complete lack of civil liberties, a destitute economy, and a nearly non-existent middle class. Like North Korea, it is turning into a country-wide concentration camp. If we do not act decisively, quickly, and overwhelmingly with our military against the top of the regime, Iran will, in fact, build nuclear weapons, as North Korea has despite dozens of agreements over the decades, in which they pledged not to. Any regime that is willing to slaughter its own people by the tens of thousands, as Iran is doing, will not hesitate to launch ICBMs with nuclear warheads against our cities. Later, the Democrat Party lies repeatedly to gain power. Gov Abigal Spanberger campaigned as a moderate but she’s raising taxes on everyday items and is proposing new income tax rates for the “rich,” which will make Virginia unaffordable and turn it into a dark blue state. Afterward, Don Lemon isn’t a real journalist, he just seeks drama and attention. He violated the law for storming into a Church service allegedly violating the FACE act. Yet, the media attacks the Trump administration.
Gateway Institute
‘Suicidal Empathy’: Is the West Committing Suicide-by-Compassion?
Right Scoop
Don Lemon indictment UNSEALED and you can read it all here…
The podcast for this show can be streamed or downloaded from the Audio Rewind page.
Rough transcription of Hour 1
Segment 1
Hello, America. Mark Levin here. Our number 877-381-3811. 877-381-3811. Often we like to delve into the world of theoretical philosophical. We can get into the other stuff later and we shall. But I came across a piece. That drew my attention and I think will draw yours to. At the Gates Stone Institute, an international policy council. It’s a fantastic organization. And so there’s a piece there called Suicidal Empathy already. Right? Your antennae go up. Is is the West committing suicide by compassion? By Drew Godfrey. Freddie. According to Gad Saad’s thesis, empathy becomes misdirected into a type of benevolent altruism that prioritizes the perceived feelings and needs of marginalized, quote unquote, or external groups. At the expense of the survival, security and interests of one’s own group and its values. And I thought immediately, wait a minute. That’s the radical left in this country and how they coddle Islamists and Marxists and people of that sort. Even though it destroys her own country, the outcome is the weakening and ultimately the destruction of the very civilization that expressed this emotion. Again, suicidal empathy. The problem this concept of suicidal empathy, unfortunately, does not work as the term predicts and ends up killing its host. What we observe in many people is a highly selective empathy, precisely the opposite of caring about everyone. What shows up as an exclusive and exclusionary concern for certain groups asylum seekers, ethnic minorities, people unhappy with their gender radicalized and racialized people, whatever that means. Criminals, for example, at the same time, paired with indifference or even open hostility toward other groups, they might be equally minoritized victimized or marginalized. What becomes harder to defend as genuine empathy is the increasingly common pattern of displaying loud, intense public identification with distant victims while simultaneously showing indifference, contempt or outright hostility toward victims right under one’s nose here in one’s own society whose suffering is visible and immediate. We might be dealing with a moral posture, a political performance, a selected narrative by virtue or social status. In short, selective empathy with selective hostility or indifference. Nearby is not higher, pure or more universal. It is just a posture wearing empathy. Close. You know, when I came up with this phrase selective moral outrage. Many decades ago in a piece I wrote for National Review, that was the title I gave the piece Select the Moral Outrage. I think this not exact but has a. Sort of a similar underpinning, if you will. Many people seem to be incubating a rage looking for somewhere to go. Dogmas that admit no dissent provide a perfect vehicle for that, dogmas that admit no dissent. Now, this new rage appears to have nothing to do with empathy or even selective empathy, but more with envy, frustration and possibly opportunism, perhaps accompanied by large payments. When there are real protesters out on the streets risking their lives as recently in Iran. There’s scant support. What vibrates in Western outbursts on the left and on the right appears to be rage, looking for a cause and constantly feeding on new dogmas. Sadly, there seems to be no shortage of them. The theory of suicidal empathy taken up and developed by Canadian Professor God Saad in his book Suicidal Empathy Dying to Be Kind, describes a psychological and societal condition in which excessive or misguided compassion leads Western societies, particularly, it seems, progressive ones to adopt self-destructive attitudes and policies that will ultimately succeed in destroying them. The process, however well-intentioned, is a form of civil civilizational suicide. And we see this all throughout Europe doing it, and we see this all throughout the United States, particularly in blue cities and blue states. The admittance of Islamists in this country is exactly that. Now, according to Saad’s thesis, empathy becomes misdirected into a type of benevolent altruism that prioritizes the perceived feelings and needs a marginalized, quote unquote, or external groups at the expense of the survival, security and interests of one’s own group and its values. The outcome is the weakening and ultimately the destruction of the very civilization that expresses this emotion. Saad draws on evolutionary psychology to suggest that empathy is a natural adaptive mechanism designed to promote cooperation within small groups such as family or the community. In modern societies, though, this mechanism has become hijacked by big hearted supporters who take pride in what they see as a virtue of caring about others. The problem. This concept of suicidal empathy, unfortunately, doesn’t work. And as I said, as the term predicts, it ends up killing its host. Now, suicidal empathy, according to Sard, rests on the fundamental misunderstanding. Empathy, A feeling can open you up to feel and with an understanding another. Or you can stay closed, enabling you to stay safely detached. Half measures selective empathy chart only carefully curated, presumably deserving groups can become something else entirely. Political manipulation. Petty. Narcissistic. Preening. Empathy can embrace humanity, or many people may not exist whatsoever. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside his skin and walk around in it. Harper Lee wrote in To Kill a mockingbird. Ideally, empathy might extend to everyone. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Perhaps impossible to do is still a noble aspiration, but what we observe in many people is a highly selective empathy, precisely the opposite of caring about everybody. What shows up is an exclusive and exclusionary concern for certain groups asylum seekers, ethnic minorities, people unhappy with their gender, racialized people, whatever that means. Again, criminals are example, the same time paired with indifference or even open hostility toward other groups that might be equally minoritized victimized or marginalized. Consider the case of our Jewish compatriots, he writes. It is no exaggeration to say that the contemporary Western left has grown accustomed to the mistreatment of American and European Jews, even though they consist of only the tiniest minority in Europe. Only point 16% of Europe’s population, as well as the U.S., only 2.3% of that population. What then, is the criterion for this so-called selective empathy? We are told victimhood Jews are based on evidence, quote unquote. That probably applies just as well to successful Christians and other non-Jews are deemed dominant. How is a Jewish child beaten in the street in Europe and targeted only for being Jewish dominant? Because we’re told Jews are not victims. Look, they say what is happening in Gaza. European and American Jews, however, have no connection to Gaza except through the smoky notion of collective responsibility, which holds that any crime committed by one person renders all people from the group responsible. Whether blacks, Jews, whites, Asians, Muslims, non-Muslims, and so on. Now this notion of collective responsibility as opposed to judging people one by one based on individual individual merits, has even since earliest biblical times been considered immoral. Let not the sins of the father be visited upon the children. Having empathy does not require to be universal toward everyone any more than love. Friendship and loyalty are required to be universal. Empathy, like all emotions, is elastic when many it might love someone the next minute hate them. You could enjoy the deepest, most intense love for your spouse and children, but feel only mild benevolence or even indifference toward the rest of humanity. No one would seriously claim that your feelings are therefore fake or not real love. You can be profoundly moved by the suffering of abused children in your own neighborhood, or remaining relatively unmoved by equally terrible suffering occurring in distant countries you’ve never visited. This does not make your empathy inauthentic. Empathy follows exactly the same path. It is probably common to feel more deeply about those who are physically close family, friends, neighbors, those who belong to our group, quote unquote, same language, culture, history and so forth. And those whose pain we can see here or share directly. The farther someone is removed from a spacetime culture identity, the more deliberate mental work might be required to generate a comparable emotional response. This isn’t hypocrisy, it’s simply human nature. What becomes harder to defend is genuine. Empathy is the increasingly common pattern of displaying loud, intense public identification, identification with distant victims while simultaneously showing indifference, contempt or outright hostility toward victims right under one’s nose. Here in one’s own society whose suffering is visible in a media. The psychological mechanism of contemporary Western left seems to be unfolding in two stages. First came the collapse of Marxism in 1989, with the Berlin Wall being dismantled piece by piece was also the main ideology of the left undergoing deconstruction. Marxism was the dominant ideological framework of the Western left through much of the 20th century. The age of extremes. 1994 The communist historian Eric Hobsbawm argues that Marxism was the dominant intellectual and ideological framework of the Western left for much of the 20th century. In explaining the Communist Party’s socialist movements, trade unions left intellectual circles largely operated within a conceptual horizon shaped by Marxist theory. Even even they were not strictly Marcos and doctrine. In other words, Marxism structured how the left understood history, capitalism, class, political struggle through most of this century is still the case with obviously in New York City. The collapse of Soviet communism in 1989 symbolized the failure of Marxism as a viable political economic system. Therefore, the left lost its core ideology and began searching for replacement. Their hatred of the West of capitalism, of so-called inequality, has been around at least since the writings of Marx. In the West, this rejection of what exists and of what is founded, our civilization’s predominance has been a constant, at least since the French Revolution in 1789. Marxism later proposed a supposed solution, false and unachievable by claiming theoretical, even scientific coherence. None of that, however, has ever existed. And I’m going to take a break, which is tough because I want to pick up where I left off. I think this is important because I want to comment on it when I’m done. There’s not a lot left, actually, but a few paragraphs, so stick with me. We’re going to take a little ride together. A little journey together. I’ll be right back.
Segment 2
All right. Just a few more paragraphs. We’ll wrap it up and then we can have a discussion about this. Memory. The topic of suicidal empathy, hatred of the West, of capitalism, of so-called inequality, has been around at least since the writings of Karl Marx in the West. This rejection of what exists and of what has founded our civilizational predominance has been a constant, at least since the French Revolution in 1789. Marxism later proposed a supposed solution false and unachievable, but claiming theoretical, even scientific coherence. None of that, however, has ever existed. This outrage and anger then seized upon a motley collection of ideological substitutes some good such as the abolition of slavery and universal suffrage, some not good, such as the abolition of borders and radical environmentalism, political Islam, and the abolition of prisons. What appears lost in the freedom to disagree diverge from these new precepts. And you exist and you exit humanity itself. You become a figure of evil. Anyone who departs from these fragile dogmas, even marginally, is now denounced, excommunicated, morally disqualified, and wherever possible, socially destroyed. Many people seem to seem to be incubating a rage, looking for somewhere to go. Dogmas that admit no dissent provide a perfect vehicle for that. This new rage appears to have nothing to do with empathy or even selective empathy, but more with envy, frustration, possibly opportunism, perhaps accompanied by large payments. These talking about Tucker Carlson there when there are real protesters out on the streets risking their lives. As recently in Iran, there’s scant support but vibrates in Western outbreaks. Outbursts on the left and on the right appears to be rage, looking for a cause and constantly feeling on new dogmas, feeding on new dogmas. Sadly, there seems to be no shortage of them. I think that beautifully written in explaining suicidal empathy. And I think that’s exactly right. And it is suicidal. If we let one more person in this country who is a radical Islamist and we don’t remove those who we can remove because of the cancer that they that they are spreading in this country, which is anathema to everything we stand for. We won’t survive it. And that’s what’s meant by suicidal empathy. And what’s also meant by suicidal empathy, in my view, is it’s really not empathy at all. It’s false empathy. That’s what it is. In other words, for some it may be real empathy or empathy that is false, but for others, it’s camouflage for evil. I’ll be right back.
Segment 3
I’m in the mood to stay on this. So we’ve talk now about suicidal empathy and you can see it with the war on ice. The war and law enforcement generally. And we have a vile and violent criminals and foreigners, illegal aliens. The. Importing of Islamists who have as their purpose the destruction of our culture in our society. And the promotion of Marxists throughout academia. Now I want to layer something on top of this, and that is the use of language. And how this is used. Particularly by the Marxists, the Islamists, the left. To advance their agenda used against you and me, Mr. and Mrs. America. And as I wrote in my book on power, there are endless treatises, ancient and new on rhetoric and dialectic approaches to thought and communication. Rather than get into a long and largely esoteric inquiry in history of both, although I find it fascinating, it’s more useful for the purposes of my book to evaluate language as it relates to the present day applications of what I called negative and positive power. You know, the book on power? My book did very, very well, but it didn’t do what I wanted it to do. I wanted people to start to. Analyze things and. See them through the lens of this notion of positive and negative power. Languages, many purposes, of course. But at its core, language is about communication. There are many types of communication and many purposes for it as well. So I will organize them into two basic categories the power of language and the power over language. The power of language and the power over language. Again, this distinction has been discussed over the ages and in recent times in an infinite number of ways. That said, I shall use them here to make certain fundamental points. Understanding that they are distinguishable in significant ways. The pursuit and maintenance of negative power. Negative power would be Marxism, Islamism. Much of what the Democrat Party promotes that is power that seeks to seize your fundamental liberties, your unalienable rights. Those things that we believe in, if they were the Judeo-Christian belief system and the Enlightenment, seize it, bring it into their hands, were relatively few. Whether that relative few is overseeing a centralized, you know, leviathan or. A mob. A map. Either way, it’s tyranny. The pursuit and maintenance of negative power require the utilization of negative techniques of communication, including manipulation. Again, think of their current debates deception, repetition, deceit, concealment, distraction and fear mongering. The entire immigration and deportation debate and language that is intimidating, self-serving and orchestrated. It is an approach that seeks to arouse prejudices and stifle independent thought. Their purpose is to exert power over language and to control the population without moral reservations. Indeed, morality itself is said to be relative or nothing but an abstraction concealing the rot of open societies and democracies and obfuscating the exploitation of the people and the political context. When language is applied this way, it strikes a central part of the democratic system, denying the body politic new information with which to make knowledgeable, qualitative and collective decisions. Of course, this is the intention of its practitioners. Moreover, communication of this sort exists for the purpose of arousing and angering the citizenry and exhorting them to action that is destructive of the existing society and their own lives and lifestyles in service to the demagogue and his aims. Is this not exactly what’s going on? Most of it is. And as much as the people and their consent are the only legitimate and just source of government, the entire enterprise becomes corrupt and malevolent. Unfortunately, citizens acquiesce to it, regurgitate it, or even demand it where applicable. Vote for believing there is no other course or that it is the best course until it’s too late to reverse course without an abrupt and often violent revolt. But for many, suffering persists for an extended period of time. Now, for example. Prior to the Russian Revolution. Britannica finds that in Vladimir Lenin’s 1902 pamphlet, which of course he acquired not his only pamphlet, there were many a printed. I have one. What is to be done? He argues, quoting Britannica, quote, That the propagandists whose primary medium is print explains the causes of social inequities such as unemployment or hunger. While the agitator, whose primary medium is speech, seizes on the emotional aspects of these issues to arouse his audience to indignation or action, agitation is thus the use of political slogans and half truths. Again, think of what’s going on right now to exploit the grievances of the public and thereby to mold public opinion and mobilize public support. Propaganda, by contrast, is the reasoned use of historical and scientific arguments to indoctrinate the educated and so-called enlightened members of society, such as party members, said Lenin. Now, here’s the kicker. The combination of agitation with propaganda, that is, activism was speech. Is it protect as protection? Excuse me? As Britannica further explains. Agitprop. Agitprop. You heard me using it earlier in the week. The term agitprop originated as a shortened form of agitation and propaganda. The section of the Central Committee, Secretary of the Communist Party, the Soviet Union under Lenin, agitation and propaganda. The Department of the Central Committee was established in the early 1920s and was responsible for determining the content of all official information, overseeing political education in schools, watching over all forms of mass communication, and mobilizing public support for party programs. Now. To a significant extent. This is what’s going on right now, mobilizing public support for Democrat Party programs. Again for Marxism and other forms. I write of autocratic ideologies and governing systems. Negative power is exercised through language that is tailored to laud over the people and control the society and culture. Language is a tool of the state that serves the state. It takes on official character. It is limited, prescribed and restricted. It compels certain types of speech sound familiar and suppresses other form censorship. In essence, it is organized propaganda. As the late Hannah Arendt, historian and philosopher defined. Simply put, it is thought control over the people. Erin explained further the what she called totalitarian propaganda involves the use of indirect, veiled and menacing hints of violence to non-believers. Claims of scientific prophecy as distinguished from old fashioned appeals to the past, and the absolutist systems which suppress men from their history of the human race. It employs absurd predictions to avoid discussion. For only the future can reveal its merits. And she observes that totalitarian propaganda highlights socialism and race as two key categories of exploitation because they neatly lend themselves to group identification and exploitation. That is, class and ethnic warfare. It’s not by mistake. The class and ethnic warfare, among other forms of exploitation, are employed incessantly by American Marxists. So the goal is to subvert the civil society and the principles, values and beliefs on which it was established, corrupt the public spirit and civic harmony and reject compromise and accommodation. Again, you see this more and more, do you not? The people must be unmoored from and cleansed of their own history. Faith and family service that’s a totalitarian state in its utopian fiction is the highest calling, if not the only calling. And all other forms of experience and socialization are impediments and hindrances to the cause. That’s not here. That’s me writing this. Of course, democracies are not immune to this plight. In fact, they’re susceptible to it. Negative power and therefore negative language exist in all societies, albeit to a different degree than in totalitarian regimes, which I earlier referred to as soft negative power. However, an examination of its influence on democracy first requires review of positive language in democracies. Positive language emphasizes the power too, whereas negative language emphasize the power over positive language taps into the individual and societal benefits of communication, including persuasion, interaction, truth seeking and the competition of ideas. It is language that is solicitous, factual, respectful, tolerant, informative and well-intentioned. Now, when you see these debates on Sunday before speech and the Republicans don’t even know what they’re doing, and the Democrats either know or it’s knee jerk positive language, that is you hear Republicans trying to explain, no, no, no, we’re not cutting Medicaid. We’re just making sure X, Y, Z. And then you hear the Democrats saying you want people to starve, you want people to go without health care. It’s a right. So the Democrats are practicing negative language and the Republicans are practicing positive language. The power of language is to reason positive language and to think freely and in the political realm to encourage debate, inquiry, deliberation, contemplation and learning. That’s free speech is an essential value and precept in the application and exercise of positive power in an open society in democracy. Now, while free speech may and often does lead to societal consensus, its exact meaning is debated and disputed even now. It does not lend itself to an easy definition. It is better understood through a contextual description and elucidation by examining the example. And I go into this in great detail. You know, if he didn’t buy the book on power, I think it’s like $0.02 on Amazon right now. I mean, I’m overstating it, but it’s a very, very, very important book for understand what’s going on in this country today, whether it’s the Democrats and immigration and deportation, whether it’s how the media communicates with you, this idea of positive power, negative power, soft negative power. What I also call authoritarian democracy. These are very, very important points to understanding what’s swirling around you. And I’m quite serious. Let me look this up while you’re here. I haven’t looked at something in months and months and months because On power came out, I believe, July 29th of last year. Let’s see, as these books get older, they get very, very affordable on power. Amazon. Let’s see. Give me 2 seconds. I’m looking it up. See that. And it’s only in hard copy if we didn’t put it out in a paper copy. $13.49. That’s it. Now, I don’t make a lot of money in a book that sells for $13.49. I’m not doing this for money. I’m doing this for knowledge. This is one of the greatest books I’ve ever written, along with Liberty and tyranny and American Marxism. And there have been other good ones. But these are my three best books on power. And on power is written in plain English, as you can hear, but very heavy concepts that I break down that’s taking place in our own country right now. And I think you’ll find it it too many retail stores, but you’ll find it on Amazon at just $13.49 again. I’m not pushing this for money. I don’t need this money. And it’s not a lot of money. It’s not a lot of money at all. It’s what’s in the book that I want you to familiar yourselves with. If you’re listening to this show, I know this is something that you want to know. I’ll be right back.
Segment 4
I also coined this term, I think I did, called authoritarian democracy. I think that kind of sums things up pretty well when it comes to the Democrat Party, the Marxists and the Islamists. Yeah. What does that mean? That means you go through the motions of voting. Popular participation in your government. But more and more, the government. It’s nothing to do with the voting, the outcome of the vote. It’s detached from it, like the massive bureaucracy, like the unelected judges. Like the Democrat Party that is constantly trying to sabotage a president that was elected in a landslide. Don’t get me wrong, they can certainly oppose him, but that’s not what they seek. So a party that uses impeachment as a policy tool, and this is a party that seeks to destroy our immigration laws first when they were in power by defying them. By destroying them. And then when they’re out of power, by using violence, utter violence with these these hateful groups, whether they be communist groups, anti-Semitic groups, socialist groups, whatever, whatever the group, and they come together in common cause. And that’s what. To destroy the country. So this is what I mean by authoritarian democracy. And you can call it authoritarian Republicanism. Not really interested in splitting hairs right now. I’m just explaining the point. And I think that actually better describes. This notion of suicidal empathy, although they’re not mutually exclusive. And I think the way that language is use what I call negative language. And you hear this constantly now from Democrat politicians, from hosts and so-called journalists, from entertainers when they use things like dictatorships and Gestapo and all these other things, these slogans, they’re intended to incite confound, anger, but they are not intended to do is to create a legitimate debate thinking process, to gather knowledge. They’re the complete opposite of that. That’s why I called negative language versus positive language. And when you have a negative view of society and a negative view of government in the sense that you reject the declaration in the Constitution, one centralized authority in your party, the Democrat Party, much like the Communist parties, they seek negative power. They seek the destruction of checks and balances despite their propaganda against Trump. They want to pack the Supreme Court, create their own ideological politburo, if you will. Change the voting system as they’re trying to do right now in Virginia so they can never lose. And yet you still vote. That’s authoritarian democracy and that’s what they stand for. We’ll be right back.
