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    • E. Christian Brugger, D.Phil. – E. Christian Brugger is a Senior Fellow of Ethics and Director of the Fellows Program at the Culture of Life Foundation in Washington, D.C. and the J. Francis Cardinal Stafford Professor of Moral Theology at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado. He has Master degrees in moral theology and moral philosophy from Seton Hall, Harvard and Oxford Universities and received his D.Phil. (Ph.D.) in Christian ethics from Oxford in 2000.  Christian has published over 200 articles in scholarly and popular periodicals on topics in bioethics, sexual ethics, natural law theory, as well as the interdisciplinary field of psychology and Christian anthropology.  He lives on a farm in Evergreen, Colorado, with his wife Melissa and five children.
    • Helen Alvaré, J.D. – Helen Alvaré, J.D. is Honorary Fellow in Law at the Culture of Life Foundation.   Helen is an Associate Professor of Law at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia where she teaches and publishes in the areas of property law, family law, and Catholic social thought. Professor Alvaré serves as Consultor for the Pontifical Council for the Laity, Senior Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute where she chairs the Conscience Protection Task Force, is President of the Chiaroscuro Foundation and most recently Editor and Co-Author of Breaking Through: Catholic Women Speak for Themselves.From 2000 to Spring 2008, Professor Alvare taught at the Catholic University Columbus School of Law. Professor Alvare also lectures widely in the United States and Europe on matters concerning marriage, family and respect for human life. She is a consultant to ABC News and to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Marriage and Pro-Life Committees. In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI named Professor Alvare a Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Laity.From 1987-2000, Professor Alvare was an attorney with the USCCB’s General Counsel Office and director of information and planning for the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities. In these positions, she testified before the…
    • Jennifer Kimball Watson, Be.L. – Jennifer Kimball Watson joined Culture of Life Foundation as Executive Director in November of 2007. She is an Adjunct Professor of Bioethics at the Ave Maria School of Law in Naples, F.L.. Previous to her work with the Culture of Life Foundation Jennifer was a Wilbur Fellow of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal located in Michigan. Jennifer earned a Licentiate in Bioethics from the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum School of Bioethics in Rome.  Her prior undergraduate studies were in International Administration and Government Policy at the Evergreen State College in Washington State.Jennifer’s areas of specialization include Eugenics in Artificial Reproductive Technologies, Heterologous Adoption and Transfer of Embryos, The Womb in Reproductive Technologies, and the Role and Significance of The Medical Act. She interviews with National Conservative and Christian Radio Syndicates as well as several foreign and secular reporters. Jennifer has spoken on the dignity of women and women’s social issues to various audiences since 1999 and has spent several years in advocacy work with various international organizations in the field of life sciences. From 2000 to 2006 she recruited and coordinated grass-roots social policy efforts that consisted of a public and private sector network of professionals and academics…
    • Margaret Datiles Watts, J.D. – Margaret Datiles Watts, J.D., is Culture of Life Foundation’s Associate Fellow in Law. Maggie is member of Washington, D.C. and Maryland bar associations.  She holds a B.A. in Philosophy (Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude) and a Certificate in Classical Philosophy from the University Honors Program at The Catholic University of America. She earned a Juris Doctorate from Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America, where she served as a Research Fellow at CUA Law’s Marriage Law Project. She also studied Roman Law and EU Law at Magdalene College, University of Oxford, England.A former Fellow and Staff Counsel for Americans United for Life, Datiles co-authored an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court of the United States in the landmark partial birth abortion case, Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, et al., companion case to Gonzales v. Carhart (2007). She also advised legislators, policy groups and the media (radio and newspapers) on abortion and bioethics laws and drafted pro-life model legislation.Her areas of research and/or publication include legal issues surrounding abortion, government funding restrictions for abortion, contraception, healthcare rights of conscience, stem cell research, artificial reproductive technology, population decline, physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage.She currently publishes articles…
    • William E. May – William E. May is Senior Research Fellow of the Culture of Life Foundation and emeritus Michael J. McGivney Professor of Moral Theology at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he taught the academic years from 1991 through 2008 after teaching for 20 years at The Catholic University of America. He is the author of more than a dozen books. The 2nd edition of his Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life was published by Our Sunday Visitor (2008), and a substantively revised 3rd edition is scheduled for publication in 2013. In 2003 Our Sunday Visitor published a revised and expanded edition of his Introduction to Moral Theology. Among his other books are: Marriage: The Rock on Which the Family Is Built (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1995; 2nd revised edition, 2009)); and, with Ronald Lawler OFM Cap and Joseph Boyle, Catholic Sexual Ethics (rev. and enlarged ed. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1998; 2nd rev. edition, 1998; a 3rd edition, substantively revised by May alone, was published in 2011); Theology of the Body: Genesis and Growth (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2010) He has published more…
    • Frank J. Moncher, Ph.D. – Dr. Frank Moncher received his Ph.D. in Clinical-Community Psychology from the University of South Carolina in 1992, following which he spent several years on faculty of the Medical College of Georgia, with a focus on Adolescent Intensive Services. In 2000 he moved to the Washington, DC area to teach at a graduate school of psychology which had a mission of integrating the science of psychology in the context of the Catholic Christian view of the human person. Concurrent with this, over the past 12 years he has consulted with 11 different religious orders and 4 dioceses to provide psychological evaluations of aspirants and candidates, as well as consulting with different diocesan marriage tribunals.His research interests include the integration of Catholic thought into psychotherapy, child and family development issues, and integrated models of assessment of candidates for the priesthood and religious life. Frank is published in Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services, Adolescence, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Edification, and the Journal of Psychology and Christianity, as well as contributing to several book chapters on children, families, and religious issues.Since 2010, Dr. Moncher has worked for the Diocese of Arlington and Catholic Charities as a psychologist and consultant.  His…
    • Steve Soukup – Fellow in Culture and Economy Steve Soukup is the Vice President and Publisher of The Political Forum, an “independent research provider” that delivers research and consulting services to the institutional investment community, with an emphasis on economic, social, political, and geopolitical events that are likely to have an impact on the financial markets in the United States and abroad. Mr. Soukup has followed politics and federal regulatory policy for the financial community since coming to Washington in 1996, when he joined Mark Melcher at the award-winning Washington-research office of Prudential Securities. While at Prudential, he was part of the Washington team that placed first in Institutional Investor magazine’s annual analyst survey for eight years in a row. Mr. Soukup left Prudential with Mr. Melcher to join Lehman Brothers in the fall of 2000 and stayed there for two years, before leaving early in 2003 to become a partner at The Political Forum. While at Lehman, Mr. Soukup authored macro-political commentary and followed policy developments in the Natural Resources sector group, focusing on agriculture and energy policy. He also headed Lehman’s industry-leading analysis of asbestos litigation reform efforts. At The Political Forum, Mr. Soukup was initially the editor and junior partner,…
    • Dr. Pilar Calva, M.D. – Dr. Calva is a medical doctor specializing in Human Genetics with a Cytogenetics subspecialty from The University of Paris, France. In Paris, she was the under-study to the world-renowned Professor Jerome Lejeune, who is considered by some to be the father of modern genetics. In 1958, Lejeune discovered that an extra 21st chromosome is responsible for Down syndrome, or Trisomy 21. Lejeune dedicated his life tirelessly and unfailingly to defend the unborn, especially those with Down syndrome, testifying before scientific conferences and lawmakers. He was appointed by Pope John Paul II as the first President of the Pontifical Academy for Life. In Dr. Calva’s own words: When I arrived in France, I lived a life divided between faith and reason. I thought that from Monday to Saturday, I put on my white coat for my scientific tasks, and Sunday was the day I took off the white coat, put on my crucifix and dedicated myself to my religious duties. Professor Lejeune truly converted me, making me see that one can wear the white coat and the cross, at the same time. That is, one can fly with the wing of faith and the wing of reason. Inspired by the life…
    • Elyse M. Smith – Elyse M. Smith is an associate attorney with a northern Virginia law firm working in nonprofit and church law, estate planning, and civil litigation. Ms. Smith graduated magna cum laude from Ave Maria School of Law in Naples, Florida, where she served on Law Review and was published in the Ave Maria International Law Journal. She was named “Most Dedicated Editor” for her work on Law Review. Ms. Smith earned her bachelor’s degree in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia.  
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  >  Issue Briefs  >  Blog  >  Coerced Empathy

Coerced Empathy

Posted: February 17, 2015
By: Steve Soukup
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Several weeks ago, Jonathan Chait, an author and columnist for New York magazine, penned an interesting yet much-panned lament about the rise of “political correctness.”  In brief, Chait is upset that “PC” has returned, after a brief hiatus, and is ravaging political discourse – on campus, online, and throughout the political world, particularly on the Left.  “[T]he new political correctness,” Chait complains, “has bludgeoned even many of its own supporters into despondent silence. . . ” This, he claims, is both unfair, in a constitutional republic, and unhealthy in a nominal democracy, where the point of politics “is still based on getting people to agree with you, not making them afraid to disagree.”  He continues:

[I]t would be a mistake to categorize today’s p.c. culture as only an academic phenomenon.  Political correctness is a style of politics in which the more radical members of the left attempt to regulate political discourse by defining opposing views as bigoted and illegitimate.  Two decades ago, the only communities where the left could exert such hegemonic control lay within academia, which gave it an influence on intellectual life far out of proportion to its numeric size.  Today’s political correctness flourishes most consequentially on social media, where it enjoys a frisson of cool and vast new cultural reach.  And since social media is also now the milieu that hosts most political debate, the new p.c. has attained an influence over mainstream journalism and commentary beyond that of the old. . . .

In a short period of time, the p.c. movement has assumed a towering presence in the psychic space of politically active people in general and the left in particular.  “All over social media, there dwell armies of unpaid but widely read commentators, ready to launch hashtag campaigns and circulate Change.org petitions in response to the slightest of identity-politics missteps,” Rebecca Traister wrote recently in The New Republic.

For his trouble, Chait has been roundly mocked, both on the Left, as a “sad white man” who can’t deal with the fact that he and his ilk are growing ever-more irrelevant; and on the Right, as a hypocrite who has perennially used PC tactics to silence critics but who finds those same tactics abhorrent when they’re used against him and his ideological allies.  The hypocrisy charge, we think, is fairly damning, in that Chait’s complaint does ring hollow and is incredibly self-unaware.  Chait, after all, is probably best known for his 2003 Leftist cri de coeur, “Why I Hate George W. Bush.”  For him to whine now about a lack of civility in political discourse is both rich and patently insincere.

At the same time, the more interesting and edifying critique of Chait’s anti-PC rant is that which comes from the Left.  Chait is yesterday’s news, they say, a shallow man, every bit as reflexively protective of his own privileges as those he attacked for theirs in an earlier era, and every bit as ignorant of the real struggles in society and the real moral outrages as any right-wing, reactionary hack of old.  Chait’s inability to remain politically relevant and politically correct is symptomatic of his own shortcomings, not those of the broader leftist political orthodoxy.

In this sense – the politically correct sense – both Chait and his leftist critics are right.  Political correctness is indeed “back” and more stifling than ever.  And yet Chait only notices now because he and others like him now find themselves the targets of those who seek to enforce this correctness.  All of this, we think, is perfectly emblematic of American politics over the last century or so.

The phrase “political correctness” is, more than anything, a term of art.  There is no clear-cut, indisputable definition, only a general sense of obligatory suspicion and circumspection with respect to behavior and, especially, language.  To act or speak in a manner that is considered offensive by another, that makes another self-conscious, upset, or feel “demeaned” is to be politically “incorrect.”  As Chait suggests, political correctness is often thought of as extreme politeness, in social and political settings, an unwillingness to use any term or to engage in any behavior that might be provocative to any person or group, particularly those who believe themselves to be or to have been oppressed.

In practice, then, “political correctness” is little more than coerced “empathy.”  One is expected, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, to feel another’s pain, to be compassionate and understanding with respect to any words or actions that might hurt another’s feelings or make him or her unhappy.  To do otherwise is to prove oneself unworthy of social standing and unfit for polite company.

The first problem with all of this is that there is no way of knowing what might be found offensive or by whom.

What, one might rightly wonder, is an “offense?”  Who defines it?  How severe must an offense be for it to compel restrictions on free expression?  Unfortunately, there are no objective standards, no established quantitative measures by which these questions might be answered.  All that matters are feelings, which are perhaps the most tenderly subjective measure imaginable.  What is offensive?  Anything that offends anyone, anywhere.

As noted before in these pages, all of this calls to mind Alasdair MacIntyre’s criticism of contemporary morality and especially its reliance on a heavily emotive disposition.  MacIntyre, recall, argued that the Enlightenment mission of destroying the traditional, religiously-based moral scheme and replacing it with one based exclusively on reason was doomed from its inception and left the very notion of morality shattered.

Without the pre-Enlightenment, pre-Modern teleological framework, MacIntyre argued, “the whole project of morality becomes unintelligible,” and moral philosophy becomes nothing more than an arena for competing notions that have no basis other than “logic,” which is, of course, subjective.

The ultimate end of all of this is a civil order in which the traditional moral order has been eroded but has been replaced by nothing of any substance or meaning, which, in turn, breeds moral chaos. The modern, liberal society, in turn, is one in which the meanings of such words as right, wrong, moral, immoral, truth, lie, justice and injustice are entirely capricious and contextual.  In such a society, MacIntyre notes, the statement “This is good” comes to mean nothing more than “Hurrah for this!”  Likewise, “this is offensive” comes to mean nothing more than “I don’t like this.”

The second problem – triggered by the first – is that the definition of offense and offensive are constantly changing.  With no fixed morality, no objective definition of right or wrong, good or evil, oppressed or oppressive, there is also no fixed victim class, no fixed description of offense, offender, or offendee.

The history of the Left in this country over the last century or more, indeed the entire history of the Progressive movement, is the story of politics removed from moral absolutes.  At the beginning of the 20th Century, for example, the Progressives were ardently and evangelically religious, the devotees of the “social gospel.”  By the end of World War I, however, that religious sentiment had begun to wane.  And by the end of World War II, it was dismissed altogether.  Religious men and women were considered REgressive, rather than progressive.  For the first six or seven decades of the last century, the American Left was pro-Jewish, and, in return, most Jewish voters were pro-Left.  The Democratic party provided a bulwark of sorts against the traditional anti-Semitism of the American upper classes, while Jewish intellectuals formed much of the Left’s political brain trust.  By the 1970s, however, the Left’s support for the Jews had begun to wane.  The erstwhile oppressed Jewish minority was replaced by a “better,” more empathetic oppressed minority, the “persecuted,” non-Western Palestinians.

For most of the half century after the so-called “sexual revolution,” the Left favored a feminism that argued that all people are equal, men and women sharing the same virtues and vices, the same strengths and weaknesses, and the same “right” to unlimited sensual license.  Today, however, the Left advocates a feminism that echoes the reactionary values of old.  Women are weak; men are strong and seek nothing more than to inflict that strength upon women.  All women are victims.  All men are rapists.  For nearly its entire history, the Left has considered Karl Marx as a revolutionary genius whose theories would transform the world into an egalitarian utopia.  Today, he is nothing more than another in a long line of dead white males.

And so on. . . .

Jonathan Chait finds the “new” political correctness far more tiresome and oppressive, largely because he also finds himself on the outside looking in at the current iteration of the ever-malleable leftist moral code.  He doesn’t understand that code, but then Woodrow Wilson wouldn’t understand it either.  And neither would FDR, LBJ, or countless others who once dominated the political Left but who would be outside of the Left’s moral realm today.  Jimmy Carter, once the darling of the post-Vietnam Left would be a political pariah today – a white, Southern, erstwhile segregationist sympathizer and fervent Baptist.

The values embraced by the Left have changed a great deal since Carter’s presidency.  They’ve changed a great deal since Jonathan Chait was a young, idealistic left-ish journalist.  And they will change again before the metaphorical ink is dry on this essay.  Such is the nature of political discourse in light of moral relativism, which is to say such is the nature of political correctness.

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