After President Obama stated that he would use \u201cempathy\u201d as one criterion for selecting a candidate for the U. S. Supreme Court, negative responses flooded the media.\u00a0President Obama talking in press conference about selecting a Supreme Court Justice gave his criteria as: sharp and independent mind; honors the constitution; respects the judicial process; and holds the judicial values upon which the country was founded. Then he mentioned an additional consideration: empathy.<\/p>\n
Almost immediately political pundits on television screamed: \u201cempathy is a codeword for social engineering.\u201d Senator Orin Hatch said empathy is a codeword for \u201cactivist judge.\u201d And Fox’s Laura Ingraham<\/a>\u00a0even said \u201cEmpathy is a loopy qualification for a Supreme Court judge.\u201d After President Obama stated that he would use \u201cempathy\u201d as one criterion for selecting a candidate for the U. S. Supreme Court, negative responses flooded the media.\u00a0President Obama talking in press conference about selecting a Supreme Court Justice gave his criteria as: sharp and independent mind; honors the constitution; respects the judicial process; and holds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[402],"class_list":["post-617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-compassion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/worldsuffering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/worldsuffering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/worldsuffering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/worldsuffering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/worldsuffering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/worldsuffering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/worldsuffering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/worldsuffering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/worldsuffering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nComedians Colbert and Stewart gave the most penetrating perspective about the controversy on all of television that week.Stephen Colbert deduced from all the television verbiage that empathy must be code for \u201cdrug-addled evolutionist with swine flu.\u201d And Jon Stewart on the Daily Show in essence concluded that loopy, conservative pundits wore hearing aids that only said \u201cabortion, abortion, abortion\u201d whenever Obama spoke about judicial appointments.
\nBlogs and newspaper opinion pieces, at the rate of about 10 to 1, dumped on empathy as an acceptable characteristic for a Supreme Court judge. Just like television, conservative politicians ridiculed the President in writing, claiming that empathy is a mere codeword for pro-choice and anti-guns. Writer after writer parroted the claim that empathy is the polar opposite of fairness and the rule of law.
\nNothing could be further from the truth.
\nLook up empathy in the dictionary and you will find it defined as simply the awareness of the feeling and situation of others. In essence, it is \u201cputting yourself in another’s shoes.\u201d For more on empathy, read the article on this site titled “Ingredients of Personal Compassion<\/a>.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"