Does "Suicidal Empathy" Explain Our Soft-on-Crime Policies?

 Empathy is a virtue — the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. But when it's misdirected, excessive, or untethered from reason and consequences, it can become suicidal empathy.

As evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad explains in his PragerU video (and upcoming book Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind), civilizations don't always die by murder. Per historian Arnold Toynbee, they often die by suicide — from within, through well-intentioned but self-destructive choices.

Watch Saad's full take here [VIDEO]

Does this explain the past decade — especially since 2020 — when many cities and states elected prosecutors and officials who chose to be extremely soft on crime?

Look at the results:

• "Teen takeovers" — flash mob robberies, carjackings, and chaotic violence in places like Chicago, where groups of unruly youths exploit weak enforcement. Victims suffer, businesses close, and communities deteriorate.
• Selective prosecution — cases where crimes seem downplayed or ignored based on the perpetrator's race, background, or narrative fit (while others are pursued aggressively).
• Sanctuary policies — cities and states that continue welcoming all immigrants, including known criminals, under the banner of compassion, straining resources, increasing crime in some areas, and eroding public safety.

These aren't isolated failures. Saad points to real-world examples of suicidal empathy in action:

• Open borders and mass migration: Angela Merkel's 2015 decision to welcome over a million migrants into Germany (and much of Europe's follow-on) was framed as compassionate. A decade later: spikes in rape, murder, and social breakdown. Empathy for newcomers often overshadowed concern for citizens' safety and cultural cohesion.
• Defund the Police: After George Floyd's death, emotionally charged narratives led cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Philadelphia to slash police budgets. Data didn't support claims of systemic murder of innocents, but policy followed the empathy wave anyway. The biggest victims? The very low-income and minority communities these policies claimed to help.

When empathy becomes "stage four" — hyper-focused on the perpetrator's circumstances, feelings, or victimhood while ignoring victims, data, and long-term societal health — society pays the price.

The core question: Are these trends (soft-on-crime prosecutors, revolving-door justice, identity-based leniency, sanctuary defiance) symptoms of suicidal empathy? Prioritizing displays of kindness and tolerance over borders, law and order, and civilizational survival?

Saad argues this isn't sustainable. Empathy evolved to help kin and small groups survive — not to blindly enable dysfunction or import chaos at scale. Without balance — reason, accountability, and self-preservation — it becomes a parasitic force.

The good news? Suicide is a choice. The West still has time to course-correct, but the window is closing.

What do you think? Is this misapplied empathy, or something else?

Note: This post was written with the assistance of AI.