A strange and terrible paradox has emerged at the heart of our decaying Western civilization. It is a form of compassion that has turned against itself, a pity so profound that it becomes a form of self-destruction. Some observers have given it a name: suicidal empathy. We see it in the voting patterns of young, progressive women, a demographic blessed with unprecedented freedom and safety, who now champion policies -- like the abolition of law enforcement and the dissolution of national borders -- that would seem to threaten the very foundations of that freedom and safety. This is not a political contradiction to be mocked. It is a profound spiritual pathology to be understood. Its roots lie in the modern world's tragic confusion of the great Christian virtue of Charity with its sentimental, secular, and ultimately destructive counterfeit: Pity.

The Christian tradition, in the great synthesis of St. Thomas Aquinas, does not teach that empathy or compassion are the highest goods. They are passions -- powerful and good emotions that are part of our created nature. But like all passions, they are meant to be the servants of reason, not its master. The supreme virtue that governs our love for our neighbor is not a feeling. It is Charity. Charity is not a passion. It is a virtue of the will, perfected by grace and guided by the cool, clear light of the virtue of Prudence. It is the steady and courageous act of willing the true and ultimate good of another, even when it is difficult, and even when it does not feel good. A mother who, out of love, allows her child to suffer the small pain of a vaccination is acting in charity. A mother who, out of a sentimental pity for the child's momentary fear, refuses the vaccination is not. She has allowed a feeling to overpower her reason, and in doing so, has ultimately harmed her child.

The "suicidal empathy" of the modern progressive is the compassion of the second mother, scaled up to the level of civilization. It is a form of imprudent pity, a powerful sentiment that has been completely detached from the difficult and necessary work of prudential reason. Faced with the real and tragic suffering of an illegal immigrant, this pity feels a powerful and immediate pang of sorrow. But it does not have the wisdom or the courage to ask the hard, prudential questions. What is the long-term effect of a chaotic and lawless immigration system on the common good, on the rule of law, and, most especially, on the working-class citizens of our own nation who are most directly affected? What are the cultural values of the people we are welcoming, and are they compatible with the liberty and equality we claim to cherish? A sentimental pity refuses to ask these questions because they are difficult and might lead to uncomfortable, "un-compassionate" conclusions. It chooses the immediate gratification of feeling virtuous over the difficult, long-term work of being just.

Why has this happened? Because this generation is motivated by a profound and unassuaged sense of guilt. But it is a guilt that has been detached from the Christian framework of sin and redemption. The Christian understands that we are all sinners, that we have all fallen short, and that the path to healing is through personal repentance and the unmerited grace of a forgiving God. The modern progressive religion has no God, and therefore, it has no grace and no true path to forgiveness. It has only its own secular doctrine of Original Sin, a sin it calls "privilege." You are born with the unforgivable stain of this privilege, based on your race, your sex, or your nationality.

And the only way to atone for this unforgivable sin is through a series of dramatic, public, and often self-destructive acts of ritual purification. The support for policies that actively harm one's own community or one's own nation is not, at its root, an act of love for the "other." It is a desperate and public performance of self-hatred. It is an attempt to expiate a guilt that has no other outlet. It is the anxious prayer of a soul that does not know how to be forgiven. This is a path of suicide. It is the suicide of a civilization that has become so ashamed of its own success, so guilty about its own inheritance, and so confused about the nature of true love that it has decided, in a final act of misplaced pity, to offer its throat to the very forces that would destroy it.