Morning Wire - Allie Beth Stuckey's Critique of Emotion-Driven Politics | Sunday Extra

Episode Date: October 20, 2024

In her new book “Toxic Empathy,” Allie Beth Stuckey urges Christian women to break free from progressive narratives that manipulate emotions at the expense of truth. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Netsuite: Make better business decisions with NetSuite. https://www.NetSuite.com/MORNINGWIRE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How important is empathy in political decision-making? According to many on the left, it is the guiding principle for making moral choices. Our guest today, Ali Beth Stuckey, host of the relatable podcast, has made the controversial claim that empathy, if misdirected, can be toxic. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's October 20th, and this is a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. Over 38,000 businesses have future-proofed their operations with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP.

It brings accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one fluid platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. When you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards and more time on what's next. Download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netseweet.com slash morningwire. This guide is free to you at net suite.com slash morning wire. Again, that's net suite.com slash morning wire. joining us this morning to discuss her new book, Toxic Empathy, is Ali Beth Stecky.

Ali, thanks so much for coming on. I'm a fan. Thank you so much for having me. So first off, who is this book for and what do you want it to accomplish? This book is primarily for Christian women. It really can be for anyone because we go through the five main lies of progressivism, those catchy mantras that a lot of people are familiar with, like abortion is health care, trans women are women, love is love. no human is illegal and social justice is justice. And I wanted to equip especially Christian women

to be able to see these mantras for what they are, which is a deceptive manipulation tactic that is exploiting your natural, your spiritual capacity for compassion and telling you to channel it towards causes that are ultimately harmful. They hoist up, this victim and by they, I mean the media, hoist up a victim and they tell you that if you truly

feel for this person and care for this person, you will affirm their feelings, you'll affirm their choices, and ultimately you'll get on board with the progressive policy prescription that intends to help this person. And so I wanted to try to get women as out of that trap as much as I could. Now, you describe the difference between love and empathy and at other times you contrast empathy and kindness, what do you think is the distinction there between love and empathy or empathy and kindness? Yes. So empathy feels how someone else feels. Kindness is typically described as an action, some kind of sacrifice or some kind of movement towards a person to better them, towards their goodness, towards their well-being. And love is also an act.

It can be a feeling if you're talking about a romantic kind of love, but if we're talking about the greatest kind of, for example, agape love or unconditional love in that is a kind of self-sacrifice. And empathy doesn't require any sacrifice. It doesn't require any virtue. It doesn't actually require you in itself to bear someone's burdens or to move towards someone in kindness and goodness. It is only about feelings. And that can be okay.

The question is, what is your empathy leading you toward? If empathy is leading you towards kindness, that self-sacrifice, the bearing someone's burdens, if it's leading you towards love, then it can be a helpful tool. I would say it's still not a necessary tool, but it can be a helpful tool. The problem is that because empathy is only about feeling what someone feels, it can also blind you to everything outside of that person. So it can blind you to reality and morality. If you're thinking only about this person who you see as a victim, you're not thinking about anyone else outside of that person, which means you could actually make a decision that would

really harm other people. And I think the most important distinction is that love rejoices with the truth. That's what 1st Corinthians 136 tells us. It gives us a long list of qualifications of love. But one of those characteristics is that it never rejoices in wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. So that means for the Christian to be loving, you actually cannot affirm a feeling that is untrue or leads you to something that is wrong or untrue. So those are the key distinctions. Now, how can people know if their empathy has moved into that direction? What are the signs that empathy has become toxic? That's a great question. And of course, I believe as a Christian that objective truth, moral truth can be found in the Word of God. But there's also some other kinds of truth.

There's scientific truth. There's observable reality. There's even just logical truth. And in order to know whether or not our empathy is leading us in a healthy direction or our empathy is leading us in a harmful direction, we have to ask ourselves, is this true? And is this helpful in as far as it is leading someone towards a good outcome as God defines good. So for example, if you have so much empathy for the man who says that he is stuck in the wrong body, you feel deeply for the distress that that person might feel. The question is, what is that leading you to do? And what is that leading you to think about gender? If it has led you to the place where you no longer believe in the reality of the biological gender binary. If it's led you to a place where you believe

that it is possible to change your sex, where it is possible to mutilate your body to identify as something other than what you biologically are, if it is leading you to a place that says that men should be allowed into women's spaces or vice versa, you have now moved into the realm of delusion. You've felt and have affirmed someone's feeling so much that you've you are no longer in touch with reality. And so in this book, I want people to ask themselves, what is historically true, what is scientifically true, what is logically true, and then most importantly,

what is biblically true? On a lot of these issues, the Bible has a very clear black and white answer, and that should be something that we are really grateful for as Christians. There tends to be this belief that being soft and compromising on some of these positions is the best way to kind of gently pull people in the mushy middle to your side, incrementally, but that's not typically been your strategy. You typically advocate for a firm but kind approach. What has your experience been? Does that work? Yeah, you know, I wish I could say

that I've always been perfect in talking about every subject. I've always been the most charming and the most persuasive on every topic. And that's not true. There are some times where maybe I've been like too forthright too soon or too harsher. Maybe there's been times where I've compromised and been too soft with my language. I do think a truth and love approach is the best approach where if you can be kind and respectful to someone simply as a human being, knowing that they are made in the image of God and therefore they have innate value without compromising even one iota in your language and your own principles on what is true, that's the best place to be. But what I learned a long time ago is that I cannot gauge my rightness by people's reaction to me. I can't gauge my

obedience to God by people's response to what I say because Jesus was kind, Stephen the evangelist, and Acts was kind. They shared the gospel. They were full of grace and truth and grace and power, and we know the fate that they met. We know that Jesus was crucified. We know that Stephen was stone to death. And so we can't judge how we are doing our performance and our kindness by how people react to us because if you say something that's true, it's going to make some people mad. But the truth is extremely powerful. The word of God itself does not return void. So if ever we are saying something is true, especially something that is explicitly biblically true, we can trust that God's going to do what he's going to do with that. And every message that I've

ever received that has told me I'm pro-life now or I chose to keep my baby or I've detransitioned or I changed my mind about XYZ that so far outweighs any criticism or any harassment that I've ever gotten. And that's really what emboldens me to keep, you know, saying what's true. And obviously I'm not the only one who is doing that. I'm one of many, many people who are saying true things boldly, and that can make a real difference. And I actually see a lot of headway in the Christian conservative space happening, and I'm thankful for that. Now, your fan base and readers are mostly Christian women, and they may find it intimidating to advocate for some of these positions that the mainstream has labeled as hateful. What do you think

is the best response to being shamed or named called if they choose to speak up? I think the best response when someone calls you a name that you know is not true is not, no, I'm not, but rather I don't care. And that might sound callous, but once you realize that there's really nothing that you can do to defend yourself against those unfair attacks, you feel a lot freer. Once you realize that your purpose in life is not to vie for the approval and the attention of others, you feel a lot bolder to simply be faithful to your calling and to simply say what's true. And you're so right that these subjects that we talk about, abortion, immigration,

justice, gender, they're big topics, they're complex topics. They're very intimidating. And a lot of women get into these conversations with their friends and they forget what they believe or they don't know what to cite. And so they start to trip over their words. They just don't feel confident. And that's why I wrote this book. Because it's easy to read. It's short. and by the time someone finishes this book, they will be so equipped in every conversation that they have with a family member, with a fellow church member, with a friend on any of these subjects, they will be able to be confident, to be persuasive. They will have all the tools in their back pocket. I made all of these complex subjects as easy to understand and digest and then analyze and then

apply as possible. And that's why I also wanted it to come out before the election because these conversations are happening right now among Christians, and I want Christian women to be prepared. Now, one topic that you highlighted in the book that I thought was a great example was what's sometimes called the holistically pro-life position. That's very persuasive for a lot of people. Can you tell us what the holistically pro-life position is and what you believe the fatal flaws are with it? Yeah, it sounds like a good one. And it's one that a lot of evangelicals hold. And I don't doubt the sincerity of these evangelicals. But typically the position is that they are not just anti-abortion, but they are pro-life womb to tomb. That's typically what you'll hear. And usually that means that they are

for a larger welfare state that usually means that they are for more liberal border policies. It usually also means that they are against the death penalty. Maybe they would even be for social justice policies. And they count all of these positions under the umbrella of pro-life, which is how, many of them justify voting for Democrats because they say, sure, Republicans may kind of get it right on abortion over here, but all of these issues are also pro-life issues. All of those issues are definitely issues that matter, and they're definitely issues that affect people. They're definitely issues that should be debated. But pro-life is about abortion for a reason because there's nothing else like it, not immigration, not welfare, nothing else. We're talking about

literally, purposely, deliberately killing innocent children. Like no better than people sacrificing their babies to Malac in the Old Testament. We are literally talking about the life and death of the most vulnerable and voiceless people in our communities, in our country. That's what abortion is about. That's what it means to be pro-life. And it's just a way to finagle voting for the party that celebrates abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. And by the way, I don't think that Democrats get it right on those other issues either. I don't think that they get it right when it comes to race, when it comes to poverty, when it comes to immigration.

And so I actually think that it's not even a good argument. But it's made a lot by people in the mushy middle who just don't want to take a stand against abortion. Now, something that struck me as I was reading your book is you do make the case that misdirected empathy leads to poor judgment, but you also harness readers' empathy. by relying on anecdotal examples that really show the harm of some of these progressive policies. Yeah. If we were to accept the premise that empathy just might be hardwired into women, which it may be,

do you think providing these alternative, emotionally compelling stories is actually the most persuasive strategy to reach women specifically? I think it is a really good strategy because, for example, in immigration, just like on every chapter, I start out with the heart-rending story from the left-wing perspective. So in this case, it was a story about a woman named Maribel Diaz that was reported by the Washington Post a few years ago about this woman who fled Mexico, poverty and violence there with her children. She came to the United States. She ended up being deported and separated. And of course, at the end of the article, you are supposed to feel exclusive empathy for this woman. and to deduce the fact that Donald Trump is scary and that we shouldn't be deporting people because it's evil and cruel and wrong.

It's supposed to get you to latch on to the progressive position in the name of being righteous and loving. But then, just like in every chapter, we look at the other side. Well, let's look at the equally heart-rending stories on the other side of the illegal immigration debate. When we tell the story of Kate Steinley, the 32-year-old woman that was walking down a pier with her dad in San Francisco, was shot in the back by an illegal immigrant who had already been deported five times, yet was shielded by San Francisco's San Francisco's Sanctuary City policies. And her dad held her in his arms, his baby girl. And she just said in her dying breath, help me, daddy.

And then she took her last breath and she died. That is a woman who should still be here. She should be married. She should be a mom. She should have a life. But instead, she was murdered by someone who was shielded by the policy. advocated for by Progressive, specifically by Kamala Harris. So when we look at an issue like immigration,

there are people on both sides of it who may demand our empathy, which is exactly why we cannot be led primarily by empathy, because there's so many people that could get us to feel a certain way. The question is what is right and what is true? And while it is important to, I think, tell stories, we can't stop there because empathy only gets you so far. The question is always what is right, what is true based on what is actually real. And so that's what I argue and that's what I do, both in the immigration chapter and in the other chapters.

All right. Well, Allie, thank you so much for coming on and I really enjoyed your book. Thank you. That was Allie Beth Stucky discussing her new book, Toxic Empathy. And this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.