Co-opting compassion in the culture wars

Compassion — or a skewed definition of it — has become one of the left's most insidious weapons in the ongoing culture war. Like so many other arguments that the left makes these days, the notion of "compassion" has been twisted. And conservatives find themselves completely disarmed when this bomb gets dropped.

Oppose men being in little girls' bathrooms? You lack sufficient compassion for transgender people. Think that children do best in a family with a married mother and father? You are uncompassionate to gay people and single parents. Argue that welfare cripples the poor and entrenches them in poverty? How cruel and uncompassionate! Express concern over the United States' porous borders being exploited by those who intend us harm? So uncompassionate to immigrants!