Posted by
SteveJ on Sunday, February 24, 2008 12:54:52 AM
Tenderness is obviously a virtue. But there's a toxic tenderness: compassion gone awry, misdirected, irrational. Instead of promoting goodness in the world, toxic tenderness shields evil and makes excuses for bad people who do bad things. That means it unwittingly accelerates the spread of evil.
You know you're suffering from toxic tenderness if:
1. You refuse to condemn the heinous acts of people you deem "oppressed."
2. Whenever anyone else does condemn those acts, you condemn the condemner.
3. You get angrier at the "oppressed" person's critics than you do at the "oppressed" person's own evil acts ... even if those acts include the murder of innocents.
4. You think that a killer who premeditatedly uses a pipe wrench to bash the brains out of his helpless victim deserves to keep on living, indefinitely -- even though the victim will never see another sunrise.
5. You believe that any American or Israeli response to terrorism -- no matter how measured -- is far more morally repugnant than the terrorism itself.
6. You think inner city rioting is a valid expression of rage and helplessness. You do so despite every indication that looting, not anger, is the prime motive for many rioters.
7. You believe we should respond to evil by understanding it empathetically -- not by condemning it, stopping it and punishing it.
8. You are morally outraged by sexism and political incorrectness. But you see nothing wrong with an inner-city woman having five babies by five different men.
9. When someone does criticize such irresponsible behavior, you brand the critic a bigoted hate monger and accuse him of "blaming the victim."
10. You think Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin and George Bush are infinitely more evil than Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong Il. You esteem Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez misunderstood visionaries. At the same time, you recoil at the name "Reagan" -- the locus of all human villainy because of his opposition to the welfare state.