"Remember that the greatest blasphemy ever committed was the conviction of Christ on a blasphemy charge. What was actually happening was invisible to the perpetrators.

So when empathy wars break out, one of the first things we should notice is how
precious little empathy is displayed by those defending empathy.

Not only do they not display the thing that their banners stand for, they also display a real-time embodiment of the concerns expressed by their opponents. It is like watching berserkers storm your ramparts, with banners unfurled above them—felt banners that have inspirational messages on them, like Try a Little Tenderness, or God Don’t Make No Junk.

Say, for example, that a critic of untethered empathy says that it amounts to a feminist-coded word that provides a way of surrounding a particular emotional maneuver with certain feminine virtues, such that to strike a blow against empathy, you have to be willing to hit a girl. And so the retort comes that this argument amounts to a misogynist attack on all women. To which the critic might simply reply, with a smile, Q.E.D."

-- Doug Wilson