Compassion is one of the most overused, misused, abused words in the English language. Compassion comes from Latin, which means "compassionate" and "suffering." When you're compassionate, you're sympathetic, you have a consciousness of another person's suffering, and you want to alleviate it. When you have compassion for someone, it means that you're feeling what they feel. And then, if it's real, you feel as if you feel real compassion, then you're acting on that feeling. It's useful.
00:00:00.000I've often been told by viewers and listeners that my show is not as classy and not as professional as the other shows on The Daily Wire because I'm always doing it in my car or in my house.
00:00:17.260You know, in fact, I've been told that my show isn't even really a show because I don't have the nice background and the fancy setup with all the nice whatever the desk and the lights and all that kind of the makeup artist.
00:00:32.920OK, special effects. I don't have any of that stuff. I've been listening to those criticisms and I've decided to finally solve that problem.
00:00:40.660And so what I did is I went out and I got a globe. You see this globe right here. I don't mean to brag.
00:00:47.640About my globe. But everyone knows that when you add a globe into a setting, it ups the classiness quotient and the professionalism quotient by quite a bit.
00:00:58.400In fact, there was even a study done recently, I think, that demonstrated there's there's a direct correlation between your IQ and how many globes you have in your home.
00:01:10.460I have three globes just in this room right here. I don't mean to brag about my globes, but, you know.
00:01:16.460And let me ask you this. Yeah, the other shows on The Daily Wire, they're very professional looking. How many globes do they have? Do they have any globes? I rest my case.
00:01:26.680Now, we talked last week about the immigration debate, and I gave my opinion, which is very simply that our laws should be enforced and that the border should be protected.
00:01:36.700I don't like to see kids separated from their families, and I certainly don't like to see the kind of abuse that has happened in some situations to these kids starting under the Obama administration.
00:01:47.920But the law has to be enforced, certainly, which means stopping these families, detaining them, preferably detaining them together so they're not being separated, and then sending them back to their rightful legal homes.
00:02:02.720Now, I received an angry email after that show, and it is a show, especially now with the Globe.
00:02:10.360After that show on Friday, I received several angry emails, as per usual.
00:02:14.900But this one in particular gave voice to a common objection, and this person said that my position and the position of any advocate for immigration enforcement, that position lacks compassion.
00:02:30.060And we need to have compassion for illegal immigrants.
00:03:22.800I don't want a compassionate government doing compassionate things.
00:03:27.220And the word compassionate in all those previous sentences, just imagine the scare quotes around it.
00:03:35.780I think that any law or policy or government action that's justified on the basis of compassion, like, say, welfare, for instance, is always in the end a bad thing.
00:03:49.120And it's always, in the end, something that does more harm than good.
00:05:19.960A person is compassionate towards another person.
00:05:26.580And what I would submit is that only a person can be compassionate towards another person.
00:05:35.100An institution cannot be compassionate because an institution doesn't feel anything.
00:05:43.240A law cannot be compassionate because a law does not feel.
00:05:48.140Compassion is an action, but it's also a feeling.
00:05:52.520It starts with a consciousness, at least.
00:05:58.440But laws and institutions can't do that.
00:06:01.820Now, as I said last week, the government should act according to a moral standard.
00:06:06.900And laws should be written and enforced by a moral standard because moral is a matter of objective right and wrong.
00:06:15.280And the government should, emphasis on should, do the right thing.
00:06:19.660So, when I say the government should act morally, what I'm saying is the government should do the right thing and not the wrong thing, even though a lot of times the government does the wrong thing.
00:06:27.440And laws should be right in the right thing.
00:06:31.820In the sense that a law should be written according to this moral standard and a law should never prohibit anything that's good.
00:06:40.120And laws should only prohibit things that are bad, which isn't to say that the law should prohibit everything that's bad.
00:06:47.200It's just to say that everything that is prohibited should be bad, but not everything that's bad should be prohibited.
00:06:55.700So, but none of this, I'm getting off into the weeds now.
00:06:58.220None of this has anything to do with compassion, which, again, is personal.
00:07:02.600So, morality is an objective standard against which all people, laws, institutions can and should be judged.
00:07:10.500But compassion is a personal feeling, a personal conviction, which motivates an individual.
00:07:18.220But laws and institutions and policies should be concerned with feelings and convictions.
00:07:26.280They should only be concerned with what's right and wrong.
00:07:29.520And it is right to have a border, and it is right to have laws concerning citizenship and immigration.
00:08:03.480Feelings are not collective things that you do together.
00:08:08.400They're something that you do individually.
00:08:11.020And you see, I think this is a big part of the story of liberalism in modern times.
00:08:18.400You know, the left, what the left has done is they've tried to pawn compassion and sympathy and generosity, you know, and charity and all these things.
00:08:32.740They've tried to take all of that and remove it from the individual and give it to the government.
00:08:38.440The individual leftist wants to relieve himself of the burden of being compassionate personally and empathetic personally and generous personally and charitable personally.
00:08:51.460And so he creates in his mind this idea of the state as this kind of benevolent organism which can take on the job of being virtuous so that the rest of us don't have to be.
00:09:05.700So the left, the left sees the state as almost this kind of perverse backwards Christ figure.
00:09:16.240You know, whereas Christ took on the burden of mankind's sin and suffered for our sins so that we don't have to.
00:09:25.240The state, in the mind of the left, takes on mankind's virtue and acts virtuously so that we don't have to.
00:09:35.640And so it's a really weird thing that they've done.
00:09:40.860And so that means, you know, that explains if you're, you know, if you believe in enforcing immigration law or if you advocate for getting rid of the welfare state or something,
00:09:51.040a liberal will say to you, well, where is your compassion?
00:09:55.320Where is your generosity? You don't have any compassion.
00:09:59.100And the reason why they respond that way is because they see no distinction between the state and the individual.
00:10:09.380And therefore, they see no distinction between the virtue of the individual and the virtue of the state.
00:10:14.240And therefore, if we take these virtuous acts away from the state, then in the mind of a leftist, we have taken them away from the individual.
00:10:26.060It seems like they really don't understand that I could make the case, and I do make the case, for getting rid of entitlements.
00:10:34.640Yet I strongly believe on an individual basis that we as individuals are called to help the less fortunate, and we should do that.
00:10:47.440So what I want to do is I want to take that away from the state and give it to the individuals.
00:10:54.860But the left, if you talk to a leftist, he doesn't think that's possible.
00:11:07.980It can only use those concepts, which are personal concepts, and it can only use them as a cover to gain more power and control for itself, which is what the state has done.
00:11:21.600Which is why I say we need to turn the picture back around and restore things to their proper order.
00:13:24.660The government's job is to enforce the law.
00:13:27.280And to enforce the law justly and to enforce laws that are moral.
00:13:33.980And the law that says you have to be a citizen to live here, that is a moral law.
00:13:41.560A moral law in the sense that it is a law that's perfectly in keeping with moral standards.
00:13:50.480You see, the left really has it backwards in more ways than one because, you know, a leftist will say that the law and the government should be compassionate and empathetic, ascribing these kinds of human qualities to institutions.
00:14:09.160But then a leftist will also say that we can't legislate morality and morality is not the government's concern.
00:14:18.140So what the left has done is they've turned morality into this completely subjective, personal, emotional thing.
00:14:26.000And then they've taken compassion and sympathy and turned them into impersonal, objective, bureaucratic things.
00:15:13.180And it's a really, really bad idea to ask it to.
00:15:18.620The government should be concerned with enforcing the law.
00:15:22.540And then we as individuals, we can come around and be compassionate.
00:15:29.000So another example, somebody breaks someone, a United States citizen breaks the law, commits a felony, you know, kills somebody, robs a bank, whatever.
00:15:39.480And, well, what the government should do, we're not looking for the government or the law to have any feelings towards that person.
00:15:48.100The government's job is to enforce the law, enforce it fairly, enforce it justly, which is going to mean putting them in prison.
00:15:55.720And then we as individuals, we can go visit that person, if you're concerned with that person, and you want that person to feel compassion, well, then you as an individual, you can go to the prison and visit that person and minister to them and care for their family.
00:16:10.120And there's so much that you can do for them.
00:16:11.720The government did its job, putting this person in prison, forcing the law, now it's up to you to be compassionate, and emotional, and sympathetic, and generous, and charitable.