The grief that attended American political activist Charlie Kirk’s murder was not solely poured out by the political right. Liberal commentators also participated; journalist Ezra Klein expressed grief in an essay for The New York Times (“I was and am grieving for Kirk himself”), while Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew stated that “we have to have empathy for other people in our society.”
Kirk would likely be surprised, and perhaps a bit put off, by this display of empathy by his opponents: “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, New Age term that does a lot of damage, but it is very effective when it comes to politics. Sympathy I prefer more than empathy.”
